Canadian Architect February 2024

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20 THE WELL

A mega-scaled development weaves retail, office, and residential spaces through a 7.7-acre site in downtown Toronto. TEXT John Lorinc

30 THE LEAF

KPMB Architects and Architecture49, working with HTFC Planning & Design and Blackwell, lead the design of a structurally ambitious conservatory in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park. TEXT Lawrence Bird

4 VIEWPOINT

Debunking the provincial government’s business case for relocating the Ontario Science Centre.

6 NEWS

Remembering Jerome Markson, 1929-2023.

11 RAIC

Fostering connections and accelerating climate action at the RAIC Congress.

38 INSITES

A deep dive into the controversy surrounding the National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan.

46 BOOKS

New volumes pay tribute to the late David Penner and document the design legacy of structural engineer Paul Fast.

50 BACKPAGE

RDHA transforms an emergency generator enclosure into a refined piece of urban sculpture.

A FAULTY CASE FOR RELOCATION

In late November last year, the province released its business case for relocating the Ontario Science Centre and it’s full of holes.

It argues that the Ontario Science Centre will require $369M in maintenance, and $109M to upgrade its exhibitions and public spaces, for a total of $478M. In comparison, it says that the cost to build a new science centre and exhibitions at Ontario Place would be $384M.

But the Ontario auditor general’s report, released in December, finds that “information provided to support the decision [to relocate the Science Centre] did not include a complete list of costs.” It adds that the Province failed to consult with key stakeholders, including large school boards in the GTA students make up 25 percent of attendees and had only limited discussions with the City of Toronto.

How do these problems play out when you look at the numbers?

The cost of building a new science centre, which the business case pegs at $384M, doesn’t include allowances for soft costs, including consultant and project management fees, and the cost of change orders which amount to an estimated additional $100M.

The building’s program relies on a full floor’s worth of underground functional space, but its price tag does not include the shell cost for that floor, nor any type of parking, basement, or foundations. The 2,000-space underground parkade on which the science centre sits, and which has been estimated to cost $300M-$500M, is entirely absent.

The price tag also excludes the cost for a 150-metre-long underground link between the new pavilion and the bridge to the pods and Cinesphere an expensive component, since it’ll be next to the waterfront and partially below water level. The price tag also leaves out exhibitions for three of the five pods, and doesn’t include most of the renovations to the Cinesphere and pods.

Diving into the $369M repair bill for the existing Ontario Science Centre, on the other

hand, it seems that the number is significantly inflated. Environmental consultants Pinchin pegged the cost at $229M. This is already a generous number: the consultants note that an “adjustment factor” of 1.85 was “applied to all repair and replacement costs” as “per Client’s [Infrastructure Ontario’s] request to account for the hidden internal and external fees.” Infrastructure Ontario then applied an additional markup of 40% “to account for uncertain and rapidly increasing cost pressures.”

Taking all of this into account, the actual cost for repairing the science centre may be closer to $350M, including a generous $100M allocation for renovations and new exhibitions, while the cost of a relocated science centre could be in the $1B range.

The government’s case for relocating the Ontario Science Centre argues that the smaller facility will attract more visitors. The estimates count on laying off 53 people one of every six people who currently work at the Science Centre. In short, they are expecting that 50% more people will visit a facility that is 45% of the size of the current Science Centre, with a significantly reduced staff managing it all.

Let’s make no mistake: the new, enormously expensive facility wouldn’t be a beauty queen. In the preliminary plans, student spaces and classrooms are in the basement. The Ontario government plans to use a public-private partnership (P3) method to procure the building it already put out a call for a PDC consultant last summer.

There is an imperative to change course on the shuttering and relocation of the Ontario Science Centre. While we may take it for granted, there is value in taking care of what we have: a magnificent, much-loved Ontario Science Centre that is in need of some TLC. The value of such a gem isn’t something we usually quantify, but if we did in a neutral way it’s clear how the business case would land.

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ABOVE Opened in 1969, the Ontario Science Centre was designed by architects Raymond Moriyama and Ted Teshima.

PROJECTS

Indigenous gathering space opens at Queen’s University

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has officially opened a new outdoor Indigenous gathering space on campus. The space, designed by Smoke Architecture, will serve as a place for learning, ceremony, and reflection.

“This is a teaching and learning space for the whole campus, with a focus on the teaching of Indigenous studies and giving Indigenous faculty a space where they can teach classes in the ways they have always taught, in the ways we have always come to know things,” said Kandice Baptiste, senior director, student inclusion, equity, and belonging, during remarks at the opening event.

“I look forward to seeing many classes here that are taught in circle and flipped from the traditional lecture style so that folks have an understanding of the history of this territory and are exposed to different ways of knowing and being on this campus. The land is our first teacher, and this is purposefully made to be in the land so that we can as a campus better understand our roles and responsibilities as human beings.”

The building is an outdoor classroom inspired by the wakaaigan | teaching lodge, a bentwood frame clad in wiigwaas | birchbark.

According to Smoke Architecture, the building was designed collaboratively with Indigenous faculty and advisors and is an outdoor-integrated learning space that is usable year-round. Accommodating a central fire and audio-visual capability, the space can be entirely enclosed or fully opened to the four cardinal directions using insulated rolling overhead doors.

The curved glulam frame and enclosure of cedar over bent ribs aims to celebrate the warmth and flexibility of wood, while daylighting from above connects the realms of sky and earth, according to Smoke Architecture. Additionally, they noted that the pre-contact form has been used for knowledge sharing from time immemorial to the present day in Anishinaabeg territories.

To achieve full accessibility to the nearby Indigenous learning suite in Mackintosh-Correy Hall, the complementary landscape works with existing topography and paths. Additionally, an existing service road is transformed into a pedestrian experience that has been naturalized with Indigenous plantings and lined with informal outdoor learning and seating areas.

Smoke Architecture collaborated with landscape architects Vertechs and Indigenous-led SpruceLab to weave Indigenous principles back into the landscape, and with engineers Arup to reinterpret the bentwood precedent of the wakaaigan.

AWARDS

Two Canadian projects receive Holcim Awards

Two Canadian projects are among the winners of the Holcim Foundation’s International Awards for 2023.

The winning Canadian projects were 1925 Victoria Park Ave. in Toronto, which was honoured with the Gold Holcim Award for North America, while the Muscowpetung Powwow Arbour received an Acknowledgment Prize.

Designed by Toronto-based architect PARTISANS ’ Serotiny Group with Austrian-based Cree for developer Well Grounded Real Estate,  1925 Victoria Park Ave. proposes a high-tech, low-cost modular housing solution that will form one of the tallest near-net-zero, mixed-use rental developments in Ontario.

ABOVE Smoke Architecture’s Indigenous Gathering Space at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, has opened.

The project demonstrates the viability of a shift to the decentralized manufacturing of modularized components, including corridors, balconies, and unit massing, to bring scalable and sustainable designs to the North American marketplace. The project is nearly net-zero thanks to high thermal insulation properties (EUI of 73 kwh/m2), groundsource heat pumps with in-ceiling radiant slabs, and low-energy electric systems.

“The project’s excellence and scalability positioned it as a promising solution for sustainable housing development,” said the Holcim Awards 2023 Jury for North America.

Designed by Halifax-based Richard Kroeker and Saskatchewanbased Oxbow Architecture, the Muscowpetung Powwow Arbour  is a centre for the summer powwow celebrations that take place for the Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation, located on Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan.

Drawing inspiration from the form of Prairie teepees, this structure points to the importance of the circle in Indigenous cultures. The collaborative design is also a case study in how non-Indigenous architects and designers can engage with Indigenous communities.

The Holcim Awards 2023 Jury for North America called this project “a visually appealing structure that minimizes the use of materials.” holcimfoundation.org

Canadian winners at WAF

Several Canadian architects are among the winners of the 2023 World Architecture Festival (WAF). The winners presented their projects at the live-judged architectural awards program in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, in late 2023.

5468796 Architecture’s Veil House, an experimental residence in Winnipeg, was the overall winner of the Completed Project – House & Villa category and was selected from 18 shortlisted houses from around the globe. Arranged in a nine-square grid around a central courtyard, it features a series of free-flowing communal spaces framed by solid utility blocks. An interior ramp creates a passage inside and out, and a weathered steel “veil” wraps around the building.

Among the WAF winners was also the Center for Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University, by Toronto-based KPMB Architects, which received the Education Interior of the Year award. The project is a landmark for the university that transforms the skyline, meets sustainability goals, and prioritizes human-centered design.

FRANCIS FOUGERE

The Glenbow Revitalization in Calgary, by DIALOG, won a Highly Commended citation in the Future Projects: Culture category. The renovation of the 1975 building will be accessible to everyone and is designed to activate its surroundings.

worldarchitecturefestival.com

WHAT’S NEW

Toyo Ito donates archive to the CCA

Japanese architect Toyo Ito has donated his archive to the Canadian Centre for Architecture  (CCA)

Ito was born in 1941 in Gyeongseong (now Seoul), Korea and graduated from the University of Tokyo. He then worked alongside Itsuko Hasegawa, for Kiyonori Kikutake, a central figure in the Metabolist movement. He founded his studio Urban Robot in Tokyo in 1971, which was later renamed Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects.

“The CCA is an architectural museum and research centre I have the utmost trust in. Upon this donation, I received requests from many Japanese architects and researchers, asking if it is possible to keep those archives in Japan. However, I have the confidence that CCA offers unparalleled accessibility for future researchers from around the world to study my works,” said Ito.

The archival donation to the CCA spans the work produced by Ito’s Tokyo-based office between 1971 and 1995, including the Aluminium House (URBOT-001), Ito’s first design (1971) published in Toshi Jutaku, the Useless Capsule House (URBOT-002), and the House at Koganei (1979). cca.qc.ca

Ottawa to launch pre-approved home design catalogue, bring back post-war effort

The federal government intends to resurrect a postwar effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada, but with a 21st-century twist.

A consultation process will soon begin on developing a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to accelerate the home-building process for developers, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said on December 12, 2023.

It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.

The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on lowrise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing, and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction. The goal is to better ensure housing builds can be fasttracked for approval from the CMHC and others, while also promoting larger-scale production through factory-based construction. The government is aiming to have the catalogue ready sometime in 2024.

The idea of a catalogue of pre-approved blueprints was one of several recommendations in a report called the National Housing Accord, coauthored by housing expert Mike Moffatt and released earlier this year.

The federal government has so far moved forward with several recommendations in the accord that Moffatt and other stakeholders put together. “We made sure that we brought together builders and developers in the real-estate industry, along with academics, but also with the not-for-profit side,” Moffatt said.

-With files from Nojoud Al Mallees, The Canadian Press

Building to Zero Exchange launches in Nova Scotia

A new organization, called the Building to Zero Exchange, has launched to support net-zero building growth in Nova Scotia. The collaborative initiative brings together industry, government, and others with the goal of retrofitting and creating high-performance buildings efficiently and at a large scale.

“The Building to Zero Exchange is about preparing Nova Scotia’s building sector for a net-zero future. Decarbonizing our buildings requires new skills and more workers, and there is a great deal of work to be done on a fairly tight timeline to help achieve provincial and federal climate targets,” said Alisdair McLean, Executive Director of Net Zero Atlantic.

The launch event for the initiative, which took place on October 25, gathered almost 200 supporters, including representatives of the Building to Zero Exchange’s Foundational Partners – the Province of Nova Scotia, Halif ACT and the Halifax Regional Municipality, Dalhousie University, Efficiency Nova Scotia, Clean Nova Scotia, Construction Association of Nova Scotia, and the Nova Scotia Community College. buildingtozero.ca

Call for ideas for St. Lawrence River Shoreline project

Landscape architects, urban designers, urban planners, and other environmental design professionals are invited to propose ideas for the redevelopment of the east shoreline of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec City, between the Baie de Beauport and Parc de la Chute-Montmorency. The deadline for submissions is February 29, 2024. commission-de-la-capitale-nationale-du-quebec.wiin.io

IN MEMORIAM

Jerome (Jerry) Markson (1929-2023)

I was privileged to work with Jerome Markson for over thirty years, first as an employee and later as a partner with Jerry and Ernie Hodgson. Over the years, I appreciated Jerry’s many qualities not just as an architect and mentor, but as a kind, compassionate and generous colleague and friend. He was a consummate human being, a true prince among men. Others have written about Jerry’s work in much more authoritative ways than I can; I will focus on our years together in getting things built. Jerry would have like that: he disliked intellectualized discourse about architecture when simple words and ordinary language would suffice. He liked to quote some of Mies van der Rohe’s aphorisms: “Build, don’t talk”; “I don’t want to be interesting, I want to be good”; and “I don’t want to invent a new architecture every Monday morning.”

For Jerry, Architecture was not spelled with a capital A, but with the letter P, for the needs of the people, and C for the contextual opportunities and constraints of the site. His buildings were a reflection of the people who were going to live in and occupy them whether it was his own whimsical “shack in the bush” (his cottage in the country) or the formal responsibilities of an infill building on an existing city street.

Jerry’s thinking was deeply affected by the work of his father, Charles Markson, a doctor who genuinely cared about his patients, including families and seniors. As a result, Jerry’s portfolio included community health clinics, medical centres, doctors’ offices, childcare centres, retirement homes, senior citizens’ residences and long-term care facilities. Another strand in his work was the early modernist interest in housing particularly housing for workers which led to numerous multi-family residential projects, including for labour unions, housing co-operative groups, and other non-profit housing organizations at the municipal and provincial levels.

While Jerry’s early projects included many houses, sometimes with quixotic and amusing results, he later limited his house projects to one a year. As he remarked: An architect’s role in designing a house is like being a family psychiatrist to a couple, but at only architects’ rates. However, he did manage to keep his hand in designing houses by helping his friend and partner, Maurizio Trotta, develop infill houses in the city.

ABOVE Architect Jerome Markson passed away on November 18, 2023.

LAURA MILLER

Jerry’s many larger buildings in the city of Toronto were also generally on infill sites. The buildings that evolved on these sites took on the urban responsibility to complete the street, repair the urban fabric and fit into the block and the neighbourhood.

Jerry’s David Archer Co-op, located in the historic St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, was conceived in two parts. The mid-rise, park-facing apartment building was more formal, and included touches such as a colonnade, and retail uses on the ground floor, like many main street buildings. The low-rise townhouse rows in the interior of the site had a more domestic quality, evoking typical residential streets in the city, with elements such as white window surrounds, balconies and trellises, and brick arches for front doors and stoops, reinterpreted in a contemporary manner. Underground parking allowed the townhouses to have ground floors with front doors and windows facing the street, instead of townhouse garage doors.

Three blocks away, Jerry’s Market Square was surrounded by many important heritage buildings. Our preliminary discussions were about questions of fit, scale, materiality, colour, texture, form and expression. Jerry said, “Let’s just squish it down and spread it out” referring to the benefits of designing it as a midrise perimeter block building. The solution came out of those words, along with our close collaboration with Ken Greenberg, then the Director of Urban Design at the City of Toronto, who was instrumental in urging and supporting us to make many of the major moves that shaped the design. It was an example of the private and public sectors working in partnership towards positive city building, during a gentler era.

Our response was a block form that completed the surrounding streets, but was split into two by a view corridor from south Front Street to the spire of the St. James Cathedral to the north. A groundfloor colonnade contained shops, cafés and restaurants. The basement levels had several movie theatres, residential amenity rooms, and parking for over 750 cars.

We chose the same John Price bricks from the (now defunct) Don Valley Brickworks that were used for the nearby St. Lawrence Hall and St. James Cathedral in beige, and for the St. Lawrence Market and the Flatiron Building in red. A deep cornice just below the penthouse floors lined up with the eave of the Flatiron Building to the west. The treatment of the penthouse floors, clad in red brick, reflected the industrial heritage of the neighbourhood. This kind of design exploration led the late George Baird to remark that Jerry’s work exhibited “an intense tactile materiality.”

Every Sunday morning during those two projects, Zevi Klausner, Maurizio and I would meet at Fran’s on St. Clair for a big breakfast, then head into the office for a few hours of concentrated work, free from phone calls, memos, meetings and other distractions: it was the only way to stay ahead of the schedule. And after site visits, Jerry and I would walk over to the St. Lawrence Market to grab Canadian back bacon sandwiches from Carousel. The zeitgeist of that era was aptly captured by the Talking Heads album “More Songs About Buildings and Food.”

Even as we worked on these award-winning buildings, we never felt like staff working under Jerry. Jerry called his practice his “atelier,” and the feeling in the office was very informal it felt like we were part of a big family. Jerry’s gentle and compassionate demeanour, and his wry sense of humour, put everyone at ease. We formed soccer teams and volleyball teams to play against teams from other architects’ offices, and enjoyed many meals and social occasions with Jerry and his wife, Mayta, including parties at their home.

Jerry met Mayta while the two of them were studying at Eliel Saarinen’s Cranbrook Academy near Detroit. Mayta was an accomplished artist her pottery work included the commission to prepare bowls and dishes for Restaurant, the formal dining space of Three Small Rooms at the

Windsor Arms Hotel and was a founding partner of the renowned Five Potters studio. The group’s annual exhibition and sale was keenly anticipated by everyone for their beautiful designs, and as an annual occasion for many architects to catch up over coffee and ceramics.

Jerry and Mayta loved sailing and travelling around the world. They often used to sail the waters of Georgian Bay on their Nonsuch 30 with their friends. Since it wasn’t a classic wooden boat, Jerry described it as “The Romance of Fibreglass.” Their trips took them from France and Greece to the Galapagos and Guatemala, bringing back many interesting tales to entertain us.

Jerry and Mayta’s welcoming and generous natures were in full display at their annual summer picnic at their “shack,” a cottage situated on 20 acres of land near Uxbridge. Friends, along with office staff and their families, would arrive for the day to find Mayta busy preparing dishes in the kitchen, while Jerry would be at the outdoor pit, roasting a whole lamb on a spit, his eyes squinting through smoke redolent of rosemary and spices. After stuffing ourselves with food and drink, some of us would make desultory attempts to play games, or straggle down past Jerry’s vegetable patch to the pond for canoe rides and a swim. As we enjoyed their hospitality and their company, Jerry and Mayta made us feel like we were all part of the Markson clan.

Adieu, Jerry: Maestro, boss, mentor, partner, colleague and friend. It was our privilege to know you, work with you, learn from you, break bread with you, and laugh with you. May you shine on forever.

Architect and urban designer Ronji Borooah is City Architect with the City of Markham.

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Membership Renewal

Ensure uninterrupted access to exclusive benefits, cost savings, and learning opportunities in 2024 by renewing your RAIC membership. Gain access to carefully curated learning experiences aimed at career advancement and staying current with the latest developments in architecture. www.raic.org/why-join.

Renouvellement de l’adhésion

Assurez-vous d’un accès ininterrompu à des avantages exclusifs, des économies et des occasions d’apprentissage en 2024 en renouvelant votre adhésion à l’IRAC. Vous aurez ainsi la possibilité de suivre des cours préparés avec soin dans le but de faire progresser votre carrière et de vous maintenir à jour sur les derniers développements dans la profession. www.raic.org/why-join.

Canadian Architectural Practices Benchmark Report

The 2023 Canadian Architectural Practices Benchmark Report, a collaborative effort by the RAIC and C anadian Architect, provides insights on compensation, billings, and key indicators. New sections cover Indigenous themes, reconciliation, climate action, and EDI. The report analyzes shifts in firm sizes, gross billings, and the architectural landscape over the past decade. Available for purchase at www.raic.org.

Étude comparative sur les bureaux d’architectes du Canada

L’Étude comparative sur les bureaux d’architectes du Canada de 2023, le fruit d’une collaboration entre l’IRAC et le magazine Canadian Architect, fournit de l’information sur divers indicateurs clés, dont la rémunération, la facturation et autres. De nouvelles sections couvrent les thèmes autochtones, la réconciliation, l’action climatique et l’EDI. Le rapport analyse les changements dans la taille des firmes, la facturation brute et le paysage architectural au cours de la dernière décennie. On peut se le procurer à www.raic.org.

RAIC Journal Journal de l’IRAC

2024 Conference on Architecture.

May 14-18, 2024

Conférence sur l’architecture 2024, du 14 au 18 mai.

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Join us for an unforgettable educational experience at Conference 2024 in Vancouver, BC, from May 14-18, 2024 . W ith more than 50 continuing education sessions, you can take your career to the next level and expand your network.

Our expert panels and speakers will guide you through thought-provoking presentations where you’ll collaborate with likeminded professionals and find answers to pressing questions.

Joignez-vous à nous pour une expérience éducative inoubliable à la Conférence 2024 à Vancouver (C.B.), du 14 au 18 mai 2024 Avec une offre de plus de 50 séances de formation continue, il ne fait aucun doute que vous pourrez faire progresser votre carrière et étendre votre réseau.

The RAIC is the leading voice for excellence in the built environment in Canada, demonstrating how design enhances the quality of life, while addressing important issues of society through responsible architecture. www.raic.org

L’IRAC est le principal porte-parole en faveur de l’excellence du cadre bâti au Canada. Il démontre comment la conception améliore la qualité de vie tout en tenant compte d’importants enjeux sociétaux par la voie d’une architecture responsable. www.raic.org/fr

And that’s not all! Conference 2024 also offers a variety of events, including the prestigious Celebration of Excellence, architectural tours, studio crawls, and the Expo on Architecture. These events are a great opportunity to socialize, learn, and have fun.

Register now to secure your spot and join us on this amazing journey!

Nos panels d’experts et nos conférenciers vous guideront par des présentations stimulantes dans le cadre desquelles vous collaborerez avec des professionnels aux vues similaires et vous trouverez réponse à des questions pressantes.

Et ce n’est pas tout! La Conférence 2024 présente également divers événements, dont la prestigieuse Célébration de l’excellence, des visites architecturales, des visites d’ateliers et l’Expo sur l’architecture. Ce sont d’excellentes occasions de socialiser, d’apprendre et de s’amuser.

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Remembering George Baird En souvenir de George Baird

In October 2023, the field of architecture suffered a great loss with the passing of George Baird, a highly respected colleague and friend to many in Canada’s architecture community.

George was an architect, a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, a former Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design (2004-2009), and a partner in the Toronto-based architecture and urban design firm Baird Sampson Neuert Architects. He was also a member of the Order of Canada (OC), and received the RAIC Gold Medal in 2010.

In honour of his memory, we are reprinting an excerpt from a biographical piece written in 2010 by Baird Sampson Neuert partner Barry Sampson, who himself passed away in 2020.

George Baird returned to Toronto from England in the late fall of 1967, having collaborated with Charles Jencks on the internationally celebrated book Meaning in Architecture. Recruited by esteemed architect John Andrews—then Chairman of the Department of Architecture at the University of Toronto—George joined his colleague Peter Prangnell in the process of transforming the curriculum.

The Toronto he returned to was a city that was being rapidly transformed by comprehensive redevelopment projects based on older Modernist principles. George was part of a new generation of thinkers with attitudes and ideas that were open to the reappraisal of what had become the predominant manifestation of Modernism in Toronto—the redevelopment of whole blocks using tower-in-the-park or plaza typologies based on single-use zoning.

By 1972, when he established his firm George Baird Architect, he had already completed the renovation of his own house, and a very creative renovation of a small Victorian cottage for James Lorimer. Both were Modern in character, but highly responsive in sensibility to the underlying historical features of the host house. This ability to achieve a nuanced relationship between new and old was indicative of a subtlety that George would bring to his contributions to the creation of an urban design scene in Toronto and Canada more generally.

Four graduating students from the University of Toronto—Joost Bakker, Bruce Kuwabara, John van Nostrand and myself— joined George in his new practice with the intention of doing competitions and whatever architectural projects might come

next. More often than not, they were cryptically referred to as “back porch projects.”

In 1975, a young planner by the name of Ron Soskolne was in charge of revamping planning controls for the downtown core. Soskolne commissioned George Baird Architect to undertake a “Working Paper on the Implications for Built Form of Land-Use Policies Relating to Housing, Mixed Uses, and Recreation Space in the Inner Core Area.” This document brought the research capacity of the firm to the forefront, along with George’s ability to bridge between theoretical issues and observations relating to a developer’s response to zoning controls.

These landmark studies led to other innovative assignments. In 1976, the firm was asked to advise on the planning of the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. The approach being taken was rational and focused on maximizing street-related built form and density. A schematic map produced by the firm proposed an alternative street and block framework that would extend the north-south streets from the original ten blocks of the Town of York into the new development. These recommendations were adopted as the basis of a new planning approach that resulted in what has come to be celebrated as one of Toronto’s great triumphs in urban redevelopment.

Having made a significant contribution to a culturally vigorous world image of Toronto and Canada, George was enticed to join a new intellectual scene centred at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. During the time he taught there, he commuted back and forth to Toronto to remain active with his firm.

Happily, the Baird Sampson Neuert Architects collaborative partnership has itself established a distinguished record of award-winning work including three Governor General’s Medals, an AIA Honour Award, the RAIC Architectural Firm Award in 2007, and many urban design awards.

George’s legacy of ideas is not only embedded in his projects, but also in the people with whom he inspired a desire to utilize design research to move beneath the surface of everyday practice, and most particularly, to be wary of formulaic responses when reconsidering the design of the city.

George Baird in his Toronto home in 2020.

George Baird dans sa résidence de Toronto en 2020.

George Baird (front), his friend and classmate Ted Teshima (centre), and architect Alan Sherriff (back), during summer employment at the office of Pentland & Baker in Toronto, 1959.

George Baird (devant), son ami et condisciple Ted Teshima (au centre) et l’architecte Alan Sherriff (derrière), lors d’un emploi d’été au bureau de Pentland and Baker à Toronto, 1959.

En octobre 2023, le milieu de l’architecture du Canada a subi une grande perte avec le décès de George Baird, un collègue hautement respecté et un ami pour de nombreux architectes.

George était un architecte, un fellow de l’Institut royal d’architecture du Canada, un ancien doyen de la Faculté d’architecture, d’aménagement paysager et de design John H. Daniels de l’Université de Toronto (20042009) et un associé de la firme torontoise d’architecture et de design urbain Baird Sampson Neuert Architects. Il a également été nommé membre de l’Ordre du Canada et a reçu la Médaille d’or de l’IRAC en 2010.

Pour honorer sa mémoire, nous reprenons ici quelques extraits d’une biographie rédigée en 2010 par Barry Sampson, un associé de la firme Baird Sampson Neuert, lui-même décédé en 2020.

George Baird est revenu à Toronto à la fin de l’automne 1967 après un séjour en Angleterre au cours duquel il a collaboré avec Charles Jencks à la rédaction de Meaning in Architecture, un ouvrage mondialement acclamé. Recruté par l’architecte réputé John Andrews – alors directeur du Département d’architecture de l’Université de Toronto –George s’est joint à son collègue Peter Prangnell pour transformer le programme d’études.

L a ville de Toronto telle qu’il l’a trouvée à son retour se transformait rapidement et

de vastes projets de réaménagement y étaient réalisés selon des principes modernistes plus anciens. George faisait partie d’une nouvelle génération de penseurs ouverts à la réévaluation de ce qui était devenu la manifestation prédominante du modernisme à Toronto – le réaménagement d’îlots entiers selon un zonage unique, en utilisant les typologies de la tour dans le parc ou la place.

En 1972, lorsqu’il a créé sa firme George Baird Architect, il avait déjà rénové sa propre maison et rénové de manière très créative un petit cottage victorien pour James Lorimer. Les deux projets étaient modernes tout en étant très sensibles aux caractéristiques historiques des maisons d’origine. Cette capacité d’établir une relation nuancée entre le nouveau et l’ancien a révélé la subtilité que George apporterait à la création d’un design urbain à Toronto et au Canada en général.

Quatre diplômés de l’Université de Toronto – Joost Bakker, Bruce Kuwabara, John van Nostrand et moi-même – se sont joints à la nouvelle firme de George avec l’intention de participer à des concours et à des projets d’architecture, quels qu’ils soient. La plupart du temps, il s’agissait de projets qualifiés mystérieusement de « projets de cour arrière ».

En 1975, Ron Soskolne, un jeune urbaniste, a été chargé de revoir la réglementation de zonage pour le centre-ville. Il a confié à

George Baird Architect le mandat de rédiger un plan de travail sur les incidences sur la forme bâtie des politiques d’aménagement du territoire en matière de logement, d’usages mixtes et d’espaces récréatifs dans le centre-ville. La rédaction de ce plan de travail a révélé la capacité de recherche de la firme et la capacité de Gorge de faire le lien entre les questions théoriques et les observations sur la réponse d’un promoteur aux réglementations de zonage.

L es études marquantes réalisées pour ce projet ont permis à la firme d’obtenir d’autres mandats innovants. En 1976, elle a été invitée à donner son avis sur la planification du quartier St. Lawrence reconsidérée par certains. L’approche adoptée était rationnelle et axée sur l’optimisation de la forme bâtie et de la densité par rapport à la rue. La firme de George a produit u ne carte schématique proposant un nouveau cadre de rues et d’îlots qui prolongerait les rues nord-sud des dix îlots originaux de la ville de York dans le nouveau développement. Ces recommandations ont été adoptées comme base d’une nouvelle approche urbanistique qui a donné lieu à ce qui est désormais reconnu comme l’une des plus grandes réussites de Toronto en matière de réaménagement urbain.

Après avoir apporté une contribution majeure à la reconnaissance mondiale de la vigueur culturelle de Toronto et du Canada, George a accepté l’invitation de se joindre à une nouvelle scène intellectuelle à l’École supérieure de design de l’Université Harvard. Pendant qu’il y a enseigné, il a fait la navette entre Toronto et l’université pour rester actif au sein de sa firme.

La firme Baird Sampson Neuert Architects a été mainte fois primée et a notamment reçu trois Médailles du gouverneur général en architecture, un Prix d’honneur de l’AIA, le Prix du cabinet d’architectes de l’année de l’IRAC en 2007, ainsi que de nombreux prix de design urbain.

Le legs des idées de George s’incarne dans les projets qu’il a réalisés, mais aussi dans les personnes à qui il a inspiré une volonté de recherche en design pour approfondir la pratique quotidienne et qu’il a invitées à s’éloigner des approches convenues au moment de revoir la conception de la ville.

Courtesy of George Baird fonds, University of Calgary

CASA executive and representatives at the Student Work Showcase exhibit at t he RAIC Expo on Architecture.

Dirigeants et représentants de l’ACÉA à l’exposition de travaux étudiants de l’Expo sur l’architecture de l’IRAC.

Influencing the Next Generation of Architectural Professionals Influencer la prochaine génération de professionnels de l’architecture

Chris Johnson & Giovanna Boniface CASA President / Président

Conferences and events provide valuable learning opportunities for students, offering them insights into current industry trends. Despite this, there are limited opportunities for student voices in professional conference settings.

Over the past several years, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and Canadian Architecture Student’s Association (CASA-ACÉA) have been collaborating to intentionally increase student presence at meetings and events. This has included supporting, promoting, and profiling student work at the RAIC Conference. As a result, RAIC members, architects, designers, and sponsors have a communal opportunity to share their enthusiasm for the next generation of professionals entering the AEC industry.

Highlighting the value of the student-conference experience, CASA-ACÉA recently released a conference summary following their engagement at the 2023 RAIC Conference in Calgary. Students who attended expressed how the conference significantly impacted their understanding of the profession, and identified areas for improvement

in student engagement. Conversations with academic leaders, interns, practitioners, and vendors were cited as beneficial to their personal and professional development as architecture students.

Camila Lima, a Dalhousie representative, shared her experience, stating: “I had a chance to meet and connect with fellow students and professionals of many fields within architecture. Both the trade show and the many events (opening and closing events, networking opportunities) were great ways to initiate conversations and contact people who, otherwise, we would not have a chance to meet.”

National conferences, such as the annual RAIC Conference on Architecture, allow students to gain valuable knowledge that is unlike their educational experience. In contrast with virtual meetings, in-person events empower students to collaborate and engage through personal narratives and shared experiences. These interactions enable the development of foundational skills that directly influence their future collaborations with industry members. Unlike typical studio settings, these events enable student participants to gain exposure to the latest developments in architecture, positioning them build professional networks and contribute to the Canadian architectural sector at the forefront of technological advancement. Furthermore,

these conferences offer opportunities for Canadian architecture students to present and validate their research at the highest professional level.

The RAIC and CASA-ACÉA are committed to continue intentional, collaborative work that enhances and expands student participation in the activities of the architecture community. This commitment includes the upcoming RAIC Conference in Vancouver, BC, from May 14-18, 2024. Together, we are working to ensure that the next generation of architectural professionals is well-prepared and integrated into the evolving landscape of the AEC industry.

Les conférences et autres événements sont des occasions d’apprentissage précieuses pour les étudiants, car ils leur offrent de l’information sur les tendances actuelles dans le secteur. Pourtant, les étudiants ont peu d’occasions de s’exprimer lors des conférences professionnelles.

Depuis plusieurs années, l’Institut royal d’architecture du Canada (IRAC) et l’Association canadienne d’étudiants en architecture (CASA-ACÉA) unissent leurs efforts pour accroître intentionnellement la présence des étudiants à des réunions et à divers événements. À titre d’exemple, ils ont soutenu, promu et mis en valeur des travaux d’étudiants lors de la Conférence de l’IRAC. Ainsi, les membres de l’IRAC, les architectes, les designers et les commanditaires ont eu une même occasion de partager leur enthousiasme à l’égard de la prochaine génération de professionnels qui font leur entrée dans le s ecteur de l’architecture, ingénierie et construction (AIC).

La CASA-ACÉA a récemment publié un sommaire des commentaires d’étudiants ayant participé à la Conférence de l’IRAC 2023 à Calgary afin de souligner la valeur qu’ils en avaient retirée. Les étudiants ont notamment indiqué que leur présence à l’événement leur avait permis de mieux comprendre la profession et ils ont identifié certains points à améliorer pour l’avenir. Ils ont également souligné que les conversations avec des dirigeants universitaires, des stagiaires, des praticiens et d es fournisseurs avaient favorisé leur

de l’ACÉA RAIC Chief Implementation Officer / Cheffe de la mise en œuvre de l’IRAC

développement personnel et professionnel en tant qu’étudiants en architecture.

Camila Lima, une représentante de l’Université Dalhousie, a souligné sa chance d’avoir pu rencontrer des étudiants et des professionnels de différents domaines de l’architecture et échanger avec eux. « Le salon professionnel et les nombreux événements (ouverture, clôture, réseautage) m’ont offert d’excellentes façons d’engager la conversation et de communiquer avec des personnes que je n’aurais pas eu l’occasion de rencontrer autrement. »

Les conférences nationales, comme la Conférence sur l’architecture annuelle de l’IRAC, permettent aux étudiants d’acquérir des connaissances utiles en dehors de leur milieu universitaire. Contrairement aux rencontres virtuelles, les événements en personne donnent aux étudiants la possibilité de collaborer et de s’engager par leurs récits personnels et leurs expériences communes. Ces interactions favorisent le renforcement de compétences fondamentales q ui influencent directement leurs collaborations futures avec des membres du s ecteur. Contrairement aux ateliers typiques, ces événements offrent aux étudiants qui y participent une exposition aux derniers développements en architecture et leur permettent d’établir des réseaux professionnels et de contribuer au secteur c anadien de l’architecture à la pointe des percées technologiques. De plus, ces conférences offrent aux étudiants en architecture du Canada des occasions de présenter et de valider leurs recherches au plus haut niveau professionnel.

L’IRAC et la CASA-ACÉA sont déterminés à poursuivre leur collaboration visant à accroître la participation des étudiants a ux activités de la communauté architecturale. Cette collaboration se manifestera n otamment lors de la prochaine conférence de l’IRAC qui aura lieu à Vancouver (C.-B.) du 14 au 18 mai 2024. Ensemble, nous veillons à ce que la prochaine générat ion de professionnels de l’architecture soit bien préparée et intégrée au paysage évolutif du secteur de l’AIC.

Fostering

the Architectural Community through Connection – Congress on Architecture 2023

Renforcer

la

communauté architecturale en créant des liens – Congrès sur l’architecture

2023

Giovanna Boniface

RAIC Chief Implementation Officer

Cheffe de la mise en œuvre à l’IRAC

The RAIC was thrilled to host its first inperson Congress on Architecture in Whistler, BC, on World Architecture Day in early October, 2023. Launched in 2021, the Congress has, to date, been hosted in a virtual format only, primarily due to pandemic-related restrictions. Riding high on the energy and success of the first in-person RAIC Conference in three and a half years (held in Calgary just a few months before), the organizing team was empowered to deliver an engaging two days for delegates.

The organizing group, including members of the RAIC Climate Action Engagement and Enablement Plan Steering Committee along with RAIC staff, wanted to plan something that was meaningful and directly impactful to the development of the RAIC Climate Action Plan. The result was a showcase of 35 diverse voices, sharing knowledge and experiences challenging the community to accelerate climate action. The gathering unfolded in three events, starting with the Congress on Architecture, followed by an evening at the Patkau Architects-designed Audain Art Museum, and culminating in an open-access Low Carbon Education workshop.

Set on the shared unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nation and Lil’wat7úl (Lil’wat) Nation, the event opened under the canoes in the Great Hall of the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, designed by Formline Architecture (formely Alfred Waugh Architect) with construction administration architect Ratio Architecture.

Congress was opened by RAIC President Jason Robbins and cultural ambassadors who welcomed the RAIC and delegates to the land. Robbins affirmed the importance of climate action work as part of t he strategic plan of the organization and

thanked the volunteers of CORE, ITF, and PEJ-AC for their contributions to the work. The day was hosted by Mona Lemoine, chair of the RAIC Committee on Regenerative Environments and the Climate Action Engagement and Enablement Steering Committee (CAEEP-SC). Centred in the work of the RAIC starting in 2019, Lemoine provided a brief history of the many actions taken by the organization leading to the Congress 2023 event, before giving way to the presentations.

The Congress Day was divided into three parts: an Indigenous Sharing Circle, an update on the climate action plan process, and finally, national inter-professional and inter-sectoral dialogues for collective action and collaboration.

The Indigenous Sharing Circle included five voices. Whare Timu (Aotearoa New Zealand) began by discussing the work of synergizing two world views and the concept of whakarongo, a sense of listening and describing every sense other than light: “walking into a space without the mental clutter, that’s without the co-design jargon, that’s without the intention of extraction, that’s without treating empathy as a technique and not a trait, and it’s about what you have to say and what you have left behind.”

Harriet Burdett-Moulton talked about her experiences working in Arctic communities. With the Arctic experiencing the effects of climate change faster than other parts of the country (and world), she shared challenges faced by architects. “What happens in the Arctic will happen in the rest of the world,” said Burdett-Moulton. “It is the canary in the coal mine.”

Sharing about herself growing up, Reanna Merasty spoke about being nurtured by nature and the important role of generational knowledge. Merasty also shared seven guiding design principles that she has developed for practice: honour the land,

practice humility, cross-process with place, tread lightly, light for energies, reciprocal actions, and heart-work.

Alanna Quock also spoke about her childhood, growing up and generational learning. She described the importance of relationships to land and place, connections to social and ecological systems, our roles within relationships, flows between relations (disrupting and enabling), and about designing from space between convention.

Sim’oogit Saa-Bax Patrick Stewart (Nisga’a), chair of the RAIC Indigenous Task Force, closed the circle by sharing from his life experiences, talking about the need to not just be human-centred, but also natureoriented. He implored delegates to recognize that “Indigenous people are rights holders, not stakeholders.”

inter-sectoral representatives join the discussion from the National Research Council of Canada, Centre for Greening Government, Climate Risk Institute, BC Housing, and the City of Vancouver. All addressed the questions of climate action priorities and shared ideas and opportunities to move forward together. The day ended with a verbal commitment from all parties to work together to accelerate climate action for the betterment of the planet and humanity.

The RAIC is grateful to all speakers, delegates, volunteers and hosts who shared their time and participated in this event. We have been humbled by the overwhelming positive feedback about the proceedings, in addition to the other Congress activities. This would not have been possible without the collaboration and connection of so many in the architectural community.

L’IRAC a tenu son Congrès sur l’architecture avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme à Whistler (C.-B.), lors de la Journée mondiale de l’architecture, au début d’octobre 2023. Ce congrès lancé en 2021 s’est tenu pour la première fois en personne, les autres éditions ayant été présentées en mode virtuel en raison des restrictions liées à la pandémie. Dynamisé et stimulé par la réussite de la Conférence de l’IRAC tenue également en personne pour la première fois en trois ans et demi (à Calgary, quelques mois auparavant), le groupe organisateur du Congrès était prêt à offrir deux journées des plus intéressantes aux délégués.

Congress Delegates in the Great Hall of the Squamish Lil-wat Cultural Centre, designed by Formline Architecture (formerly Alfred Waugh Architect) with construction administration architect Ratio Architecture.

Les délégués du congrès dans le grand hall du Centre culturel

Lil-wat de Squamish conçu par Formline Architecture (anciennement Alfred Waugh Architect), dont l’administration de la construction a été effectuée par la firme Ratio Architecture.

The event was rounded out with a presentation from the CAEEP-SC, providing a summary of what it has heard to date through national dialogues. It is using a reflexive thematic analysis approach to review multiple data sources, including climate jams, conference events, and surveys, with emerging themes organized into broad categories of practice, education, and advocacy. Afterwards, all delegates had an opportunity to contribute to the national dialogue by participating in a Climate Jam event.

This was followed by back-to-back intersectoral and inter-professional panels focused on collective action and collaboration. Inter-professional representatives spoke from the Canadian Institute of Planners, Engineers and Geoscientists of BC, and Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. We were honoured to have several

Le groupe organisateur, formé de membres du Comité directeur sur le plan d’engagement et d’habilitation en matière d’action climatique de l’IRAC et de membres du personnel de l’IRAC, voulait planifier un événement significatif ayant un impact direct sur l’élaboration du Plan d’action climatique de l’IRAC. Le résultat a été une présentation de 35 voix diversifiées qui ont partagé leurs connaissances et expériences pour inciter la communauté à accélérer l’action climatique. Le rassemblement s’est déroulé en trois activités : le Congrès sur l’architecture, suivi d’une soirée au Musée d’art Audain, conçu par la firme Patkau Architects, puis de la présentation d’un atelier de formation en libre accès sur la réduction des émissions de carbone.

Situé sur le territoire non cédé qui est partagé par la Nation Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) et la Nation Lil’wat7úl (Lil’wat), le Congrès s’est ouvert sous les canots du grand hall du Centre culturel Lil’wat de Squamish conçu

RAIC

par Formline Architecture (anciennement Alfred Waugh Architect) avec la firme Ratio Architecture, chargée de la surveillance des travaux de construction.

Le président de l’IRAC, Jason Robbins a ouvert le Congrès et des ambassadeurs culturels ont souhaité la bienvenue à l’IRAC et aux délégués sur leurs terres. Robbins a affirmé l’importance de l’action climatique comme volet du plan stratégique de l’organisation et a remercié les bénévoles des divers comités et groupes de travail (environnements régénératifs, Autochtones, promotion de l’équité et de la justice) pour leurs contributions. Mona Lemoine, présidente du Comité sur les environnements régénératifs et du Comité directeur sur l’engagement et l’habilitation en matière d’action climatique (CD-EHAC) de l’IRAC a animé la journée. Centrée sur le travail de l’IRAC depuis 2019, elle a présenté un bref historique des nombreuses mesures entreprises par l’organisation en vue du Congrès 2023 avant de laisser place aux présentations.

La journée du congrès a été divisée en trois parties : un cercle de partage autochtone, un compte-rendu sur le processus d’élaboration du plan d’action climatique et finalement, des dialogues interprofessionnels et intersectoriels en vue d’une action collective et d’une collaboration.

Le cercle de partage autochtone a donné la parole à cinq personnes. Whare Timu (Aotearoa, Nouvelle-Zélande) a commencé par évoquer le travail de synergie entre deux visions du monde et le concept de whaka-

rongo, un sens de l’écoute et de la description de tous les sens autres que la lumière : « entrer dans un espace en ayant l’esprit libre, c’est-à-dire sans jargon de conception commune, sans intention d’extraction, sans considérer l’empathie comme une technique plutôt que comme un trait de caractère, et dire ce que vous avez à dire et ce que vous avez laissé derrière ».

Harriet Burdett-Moulton a parlé de ses expériences de travail dans les communautés arctiques. Comme l’Arctique subit les effets du changement climatique plus vite que d’autres parties du pays (et du monde), elle a fait part des défis qui se posent pour les architectes. « Ce qui arrive dans l’Arctique se produira dans le reste du monde », a-t-elle dit. « C’est le canari dans la mine de charbon. »

Reanna Merasty a parlé de son expérience d’avoir grandi dans la nature et du rôle important des savoirs générationnels. Elle a également fait part des sept principes directeurs de conception qu’elle a élaborés pour sa pratique : honorer la terre, pratiquer l’humilité, adopter un processus transversal avec le lieu, laisser le moins de traces possible, laisser les énergies se déployer, mener des actions réciproques et mettre tout son cœur au travail.

Alanna Quock a également parlé de son enfance, de l’endroit où elle a grandi et des apprentissages générationnels. Elle a décrit l’importance des relations avec la terre et le lieu, des liens avec les systèmes sociaux et écologiques, de nos rôles au sein de ces

relations, des flux entre les relations (perturbation et facilitation) et de la conception à partir de l’espace.

Sim’oogit Saa-Bax Patrick Stewart (Nisga’a), président du groupe de travail autochtone de l’IRAC a clos le cercle en faisant part de ses expériences de vie. Il a parlé du besoin d’orienter l’action sur la nature et pas seulement sur l’humain. Il a imploré les délégués de reconnaître que les « peuples autochtones sont des détenteurs de droits et non des parties prenantes ».

L’événement s’est achevé par une présentation du CD-EHAC qui a résumé les propos entendus jusqu’alors dans le cadre des dialogues nationaux. Le Comité directeur utilise une approche d’analyse thématique réflexive pour examiner les multiples sources de données, notamment les remue-méninges climatiques, les conférences et les sondages portant sur des thèmes émergents divisés en grandes catégories sur l’exercice de la profession, l’éducation et le plaidoyer. Tous les délégués ont ensuite eu l’occasion de contribuer au dialogue national en participant à un remue-méninges climatique.

L a séance a été suivie de panels intersectoriels et interprofessionnels consécutifs centrés sur l’action collective et la collaboration. Le panel interprofessionnel comprenait des représentants de l’Institut canadien des urbanistes, des ingénieurs et des géoscientifiques de la C.-B. et de l’Association des a rchitectes paysagistes du Canada. Nous avons eu l’honneur d’accueillir au sein du panel intersectoriel des représentants du Conseil national de recherches du Canada, du Centre pour un gouvernement vert, du Climate Risk Institute, de BC Housing et de la ville de Vancouver. Tous les membres de ces panels ont traité des priorités en matière d’action climatique et ont présenté des idées et des possibilités d’action pour avancer ensemble. La journée s’est conclue par un engagement verbal de toutes les parties à travailler ensemble pour accélérer l’action climatique afin d’assurer le mieuxêtre de la planète et de l’humanité.

L’IRAC remercie tous les conférenciers, les délégués, les bénévoles et les hôtes de cet événement. Nous avons été touchés par les commentaires très élogieux sur les débats et les autres activités du Congrès. Tout cela n’aurait pas été possible sans la collaboration et les liens de nombreux membres de la communauté architecturale.

An illustration highlights key aspects of engaging with Indigenous architects and architecture.

Une illustration des principaux aspects d’un engagement envers l’architecture autochtone et d’une collaboration avec des architectes autochtones.

Sim’oogit Saa-Bax Dr Patrick Stewart & Marissa Nahanee ©2015

Advancing the “Good” RFP Promouvoir la « bonne » DP

Lawrence Bird, MRAIC RAIC Advisor to Professional Practice Conseiller à la

One of the priorities of the RAIC is supporting the architectural community to elevate practice, including advocating for structures and processes that further excellence in the built environment. This work, led by the RAIC operational team, is vitally supported by RAIC volunteer committees, working groups and task forces, including the Practice Support Committee (PSC). The work of the PSC has expanded over the past years to include focused working groups, including the Fees and Procurement Working Group (FPWG), whose scope includes standards for ensuring fair professional fees and procurement processes.

Over the past year, the attention of the FPWG has turned to supporting practitioners’ engagement with Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Expressed concerns are primarily related to RFPs issued without sufficient information, lacking satisfactory procedures to ensure equitable treatment of proponents, and other shortcomings.

As a resource for clients and owners, the RAIC developed an eleven-step process for RFP development as part of the most recent edition of the Canadian Handbook of Practice for Architects (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 2020, see Appendix B). The R AIC appears to be unique among architectural professional bodies around the world in providing RFP-related guidelines. However, while they offer recommendations for development of good, complete and fair RFPs, they are not mandatory for use, nor

dont le Groupe de travail sur les honoraires et l’approvisionnement, qui se penche notamment sur les normes visant à assurer des honoraires professionnels et des processus d’approvisionnement équitables.

Au cours de la dernière année, ce groupe de travail a porté son attention sur le soutien aux praticiens invités à répondre à des demandes de propositions (DP). Les inquiétudes exprimées se rapportent principalement aux DP publiées sans information s uffisante, dont les procédures visant à assurer le traitement équitable des répondants ne sont pas définies et qui comportent d’autres lacunes.

do they provide any recourse for practitioners encountering RFPs that do not meet t he guidelines.

The RAIC has acted to support and/or advocate on behalf of architects contesting inadequate RFPs: to-date, this has been done on an as-needed or as-requested basis. With an eye on increasing use of the guidelines to advocate for better RFPs, the FPWG is developing a more structured means to provide support to members. This includes a more formalized process for reviewing RFPs that members refer to the RAIC, including an assessment checklist that would also serve as an educational tool for those that issue RFPs. Furthermore, to increase adoption of the RFP guidelines, outreach and education is being planned. These resources are intended to work in complement with the existing CHOP guidelines.

The RAIC is currently sharing the proposed assessment checklist with members, and gathering suggestions and feedback. Feedback can be submitted through the survey at bit.ly/3Nxoz6c, until February 15, 2024.

L’une des priorités de l’IRAC est de soutenir la communauté architecturale afin de rehausser la pratique et notamment de plaider en faveur de structures et de processus qui favorisent l’excellence dans l’environnement bâti. Ce travail, dirigé par l’équipe opérationnelle de l’IRAC, a le soutien essentiel des comités et des groupes de travail bénévoles de l’organisation, dont le Comité d’aide à la pratique. Le mandat de ce comité s’est élargi au cours des dernières années et comprend maintenant des groupes de travail ciblés,

Comme ressource à l’intention des clients et des maîtres d’ouvrage, l’IRAC a élaboré un processus en onze étapes pour l’élaboration d’une DP dans sa dernière édition du Manuel canadien de pratique de l’architecture (Institut royal d’architecture, 2020, voir l’Annexe B). Il semble que l’IRAC soit le seul organisme professionnel du domaine de l’architecture dans le monde à fournir des lignes directrices sur les DP. Ces lignes directrices ne sont toutefois pas obligatoires, même si elles offrent des recommandations pour l’élaboration de DP de qualité, complètes et justes. Elles ne prévoient pas de recours pour les praticiens sollicités par des DP qui ne les respectent pas.

L’IRAC est intervenu pour aider les architectes ou pour contester en leur nom des DP inadéquates : jusqu’à maintenant, il a agi selon les besoins ou les demandes. Dans une volonté d’accroître l’utilisation des lignes directrices et de plaider en faveur de meilleures DP, le Groupe de travail sur les honoraires et l’approvisionnement est en train de déterminer une façon plus structurée d’aider les membres. Il s’agit notamment d’un processus plus formel d’examen des DP que les membres lui soumettent, y compris une liste de vérification q ui servirait également d’outil de sensibilisation pour les organismes qui publient les DP. De plus, pour favoriser l’adoption des lignes directrices sur les DP, le comité prévoit de mener des activités de sensibilisation et d’éducation. Ces ressources sont destinées à compléter les lignes directrices du MCPA.

L’IRAC présente actuellement le projet de liste de vérification d’évaluation des DP aux membres et sollicite leurs suggestions et commentaires. Ils peuvent le faire en répondant à un bref questionnaire à bit.ly/3Nxoz6c , d’ici le 15 février 2024.

pratique professionnelle de l’IRAC.

Huntington Theatre

The extensive renovation of Huntington Theatre in Boston touched every aspect of the structure, including critical upgrades of all mechanical systems. The 2.5 year project covered 75,000 square feet and restored and revitalized key architectural features of the building while providing modern comforts and amenities in public spaces and behind the scenes.

The project included four 6-feet x 6-feet double-leaf smoke vents and a single-leaf thermally broken smoke vent, 4-feet x 4-feet. “The existing ventilation structure was ineffective, and the theatre relied on manual operation of smoke vents,’’ said Nurit Zuker, Associate at Bruner/Cott Architects. “The location and condition of the existing ventilation structure on the roof was positioned vertically, but at an angle, which meant it could not be replaced with a modern unit.”

“The BILCO smoke vents were specified as a solution as they were ready to install, could be integrated with the fire alarm, and were large enough to ventilate the entire stage appropriately.”

– Nurit Zuker, Associate at Bruner/Cott Architects

Project Snapshot

• A $55 million renovation project included 5 smoke vents from BILCO, including the first thermally broken smoke vent to be used in a commercial application.

• The theater opened in 1925, and the existing vents relied on manual operation and were vertically positioned. They were closed and left in place.

Smoke Vents

• Smoke vents play an important role in commercial projects as they protect property and support firefighters by allowing the escape of smoke, heat and gases from a burning building.

• The vents activate by the melting of a fusible link and are used in venues such as factories, warehouses, retail facilities and auditoriums.

THE WELL

TORONTO’S FIRST MEGA-SCALED DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT OPENS A NEW CHAPTER FOR THE CITY’S URBAN FORM.

PROJECT The Well, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECTS Hariri Pontarini Architects (Masterplan and Office), Adamson Associates Architects (Executive Architect), BDP (Retail, Canopy, Landscape Architect), CCxA Architectes Paysagistes (Landscape Architect—Masterplan and Public Realm), Giannone Petricone Associates (Wellington Market), Wallman Architects (Residential Midrises), architects—Alliance (Residential Highrises), Urban Strategies (Urban Design and Planning)

PHOTOS RioCan, unless otherwise noted

TEXT John Lorinc

The elevating history of Toronto’s upward trajectory is a story that can be told in chapters, beginning with suburban slab apartments and downtown bank towers (1960s-1980s), moving through the era of arterial point tower clusters (on Bay, the Kings, North York City Centre, downtown Yonge, Jarvis) and on to massive industrial conversions (Liberty Village, the railway lands). Half a century after David Crombie imposed his infamous 45-foot freeze, height passes muster almost anywhere, and, despite policy efforts to stoke low- and midrise residential, there’s little to indicate that Toronto’s verticality will subside anytime soon.

What is quite new in the narrative of the city’s intensification is the advent of the mega-site not just large-ish former car dealerships and the like, but precinct-sized projects that come fitted out with all manner of planning riddles, such as relationships to transit, abutting neighbourhoods, and architectural vernaculars. These sites include large inner city and suburban supermarket and mall properties, with their acres of blacktop, as well as marquis projects, such as the redevelopment of the 9.2-acre Canada Square site, at Yonge and Eglinton, by Oxford Properties and CT REIT working with Hariri Pontarini and Urban Strategies, and the former Honest Ed’s/ Mirvish Village lands, which are being converted to mixed-use rental by Westbank with Henriquez Partners Architects, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Urban Strategies, and Janet Rosenberg Landscape Architects.

OPPOSITE Occupying almost an entire city block, the new development comprises seven connected buildings, including a glass office tower to the east, three mixed-use residential and commercial towers to the south, and three mixed-use midrises to the north.

Most (though not all) of the developers pursuing these large-scale gigs recognize they require a more extensive tool kit intentional architectural variety, unconventional massing, new public open spaces and, crucially, porousness to prevent such developments from becoming too monolithic.

In the case of the Galleria Mall, ELAD Canada, working with Urban Strategies and Hariri Pontarini Architects, cut a deal with the city to build a new grid-busting diagonal road through the site and swap land to create a central park. With Mirvish Village and a future Ontario Line project at the Corktown station at King and Parliament, the designers and city planners carved out mid-block pedestrian cutthroughs, which, with the exception of a few examples in the downtown office core, represent an entirely new type of car-free public space in the city. (The Corktown site plan, prepared by SvN, includes two intersecting mid-block connections.)

The first of these mega-projects to cross the finish line is The Well, a much anticipated and heavily publicized collaboration between RioCan and Allied Properties REIT. The 7.7-acre site which belonged to the Thomson family, owner of The Globe and Mail, whose flagship facility stood on the site for many years, and much else includes 1.2 million square feet of office space, 320,000 square feet of retail,

and some 1,700 condos and rental units. The developers estimate it will eventually house about 11,000 residents and employees, whose comings and goings are expected to sustain the retail space and provide a major boost to a somewhat ragged corner of the King West district.

Several design firms were involved in the project, including Hariri Pontarini Architects, which was responsible for the office tower and led the masterplan in collaboration with Urban Strategies and CCxA BDP led the retail components, architects Alliance designed the residential towers on the southern half of the site, and Wallman Architects oversaw the residential midrises on the northern half. The late Claude Cormier’s practice, CCxA , developed the landscape plan, while Adamson Associates served as executive architect.

The complex features a huge underground cistern thus, “the well,” a name that also nods to the adjacency with Wellington Street. The reservoir is not just a fixture of the project’s internal heating/cooling infrastructure, but will also serve as a means of extending the city’s deep lake water cooling network (owned and operated by Enwave) into the western part of the core.

The Well’s headlining feature, however, is the covered passageways physically linking the various buildings that open onto Front Street,

ABOVE The 7.7-acre site formerly housed The Globe and Mail’s facility, and is located in the midst of the densifying King West area. To the south, it adjoins the future Rail Deck District, a five-tower complex that is being planned to cantilever over the VIA and GO train corridor.

OFFICE - HARIRI PONTARINI ARCHITECTS

RESIDENTIAL - ARCHITECTS—ALLIANCE

RESIDENTIAL - WALLMAN ARCHITECTS

RETAIL - BDP PASSAGEWAYS

Spadina and Wellington. These mid-block, multi-level connections lined with shops and colonnades, and then topped by a undulating latticed glass canopy are unlike anything else in Toronto, with the possible exception of Santiago Calatrava’s smaller enclosed galleria in Brookfield’s BCE Place.

This space can be seen and experienced in two overlapping ways: as an inside-out mall, and as a means for pedestrians to move between the three streets that delineate the property. These internal lanes have no doors, and as such the passageway will function as a “privately-owned public space” (POPS), a formal designation created about a decade ago by the City of Toronto’s planning department as a means of expanding the pedestrian realm in an increasingly vertical downtown.

The most literal inspiration for The Well’s covered mall can be found in many parts of the U.K . “This idea of having a roof like an umbrella, rather than an enclosed space, is something we’ve done in the U.K . a lot,” says Adrian Price, a London-based principal at BDP, noting that British planning rules in the 1990s didn’t permit enclosed malls. He cites examples like Victoria Square in Belfast and Cabot Circus in Bristol. But,

as David Pontarini notes of those U.K. projects, “They’re all mixed-use residential-retail-office sites, but they don’t work at the density [The Well] is working at. This is kind of a European-combined-with-Asian model.”

The canopy designed collaboratively by Hariri Pontarini, BDP, and Adamson, working with RJC Engineers extends between seven buildings. It is held aloft by V-shaped supports, relying on what Price calls a “continuous walk-in gutter” that extends around the edge of the structure to provide stiffness. The supports, in turn, are designed to have enough give to accommodate building movement, while the panels of engineered glass sit atop the lattice. “It’s the largest structure of its type in North America,” says Price.

The internal passageways of the mall provide the most intimately scaled evidence of the project’s strategy to pack the site with diverse architectural elements: the office and retail blocks facing the promenade are rendered in distinct styles and materials, including red brick, white terracotta, and metal fins. As a whole, the complex includes seven connected buildings, ranging from tall glass office towers to mid-rise brick residential blocks that step down towards Wellington, self-consciously

ABOVE An undulating canopy spans above the three storey commercial spine of the complex, creating a protected outdoor shopping mall that doubles as a set of passageways for locals crossing through the neighbourhood. The adjoining buildings are designed in distinct, but compatible materials and styles, bringing visual variety to the spaces.

referencing the scale and massing of the King West brick-and-beam warehouses immediately to the north. The north face of the office towers features a glass elevator, offering commanding views of the west end, while a rooftop restaurant provides sweeping vistas of downtown.

Two of the residential towers on the Front Street side are aligned, sensibly, off the customary Toronto grid so as to avoid direct exposure to morning and afternoon sun. Thus situated, they bear a certain resemblance to the off-centre orientation of every sun-destination hotel or condo. But this decision reflects an important and all-toooften ignored reality about the thermal loading that is endemic in so many high-rise glazed residential towers in Toronto.

The site’s intentional mix of architectural forms and styles holds up a mirror to the extraordinary variety in built form in the chunk of King West that extends from Spadina over to Tecumseh. The precinct now includes everything from early-19th-century workers’ cottages to the Bjarke Ingels Group’s King Toronto a Habitat-esque confection, created with developers Westbank and Allied Properties, and designer Diamond Schmitt Architects. Hariri Pontarini worked on another mixeduse Allied/RioCan project across the street from where King Toronto is under construction the King Portland Centre. The King Portland Centre and The Well share a strategy of leveraging the network of mid-block passageways which have long been a feature of the area.

Indeed, The Well’s urban design is its most distinctive feature. The entrance portal from the corner of Spadina and Front for years, a car dealership is now all show business, while the north-facing edge, just around the corner, seems to want to blend into, but also define, a rather staid stretch of Wellington. The project planners are to be commended for providing a generous and well-landscaped sidewalk allowance on this side of The Well. However, it remains to be seen whether the former buzz of that stretch of Wellington, with its industrial businesses, bistros and oddball clubs, will ever come back or if it is now destined to remain a kind of high-end residential interstitial space between Front and King.

As for the south side, the passageway and adjoining condo entrances opening onto Front are likely to spend the next 10 to 15 years staring at what will become a vast construction site. The five-tower Rail Deck District project is to be cantilevered over the GO/VIA rail corridor, after prevailing in a tense air-rights battle with the City of Toronto over the latter’s plan to build a multi-billion-dollar park above the tracks. Metrolinx also has a block of land reserved across Front Street from The Well for a future shoulder-station.

For the time being, the question posed by The Well and its highly deliberate urban design choices is a variation on the one that Eb Zeidler’s Eaton Centre posed when it opened in the late 1970s. Will the mall’s gravitational pull suck King Westers, in all their guises, away from

creating dynamic connections and sightlines within the three-storey, canopy-topped space.

King and Lower Spadina? Or does its porousness a feature that serves as a notable point of differentiation with the Eaton Centre represent a meaningful addition to the urban connectivity of that neighbourhood?

It feels trite to say here that time will tell. Yet the breathtaking dynamism of King West’s urban form can lead to no other conclusion for the moment. The enormous project has enormous ambitions, setting out to meaningfully address itself to the three streets around it, and to create a new downtown hub. But it begins life as a kind of island of high density within a mid-rise neighbourhood that’s very much in flux. How well The Well serves the future and evolving King West is an open question, yet one whose answer is revealing itself bit by bit and now mega-block by mega-block with each passing year.

John Lorinc is a Toronto journalist who writes about planning, public space and development for Spacing and The Globe and Mail. Follow him on X at @johnlorinc.

DWAYNE KEITH, NEGAR KHALILI, JIMIN KIM, MIKE KOEHLER, GILLES LEGER, TONINO OTTAVIANI, THERESA PRINCE, DAN RUBENZAHL, ARLENE SO, GINTARAS VALIULIS, GABRIEL VIRAG, ASHLEY WEWIORA. BDP—ADRIAN PRICE, STEVE DOWNEY, ROBERTA MASSABO, MAARTEN MUTTERS, GREG FROGGATT, LAUREN COPPING, MARCO COSMI, PAUL FOSTER, MALCOLM DE CRUZ, CATHERINE GRIFFITHS, IVAN POPOV, MICHELLE WONG, HOA QUAN, MARIA MARTINEZ, SIMON PEREZ, TREVOR POOL, LUMINITA MUSAT, EMILIE KWAPISZ, DANIELE DE PAULA, MILLAN TARAZONA, PETER COLEMAN, WAIMOND IP, ADRIANO SCARFO. BDP (INTERIOR DESIGN)—JUSTIN PARSONS, SEAN RAINEY, CORA GRANIER, AMY SIMPSON, VIVIEN KERR, ANNA CARNEVALE, MELODIE PETERS. CONCEPT LIGHTING— COLIN BALL, SARAH ALSAYED, MIM BEAUFORT, JONO REDDEN. BDP (LANDSCAPE)—MEHRON KIRK, LUCY WHITE, CEDRIC CHAUSSE, BETHANY GALE, MARTYNA DOBOSZ, DALIA TODARY-MICHAEL. WALLMAN ARCHITECTS—RUDY WALLMAN, ROD PELL, KHODAYAR SHAFAEI, MICHAEL PANACCI, ALEKSANDRA MAZOWIEC, TRISTAN ARMESTO, SHAUN OLDFIELD. CCXA ARCHITECTES PAYSAGISTES—CLAUDE CORMIER, GUILLAUME PARADIS, LOGAN LITTLEFIELD, YANNICK ROBERGE, MARC HALLÉ, JAMES COLE, YI ZHOU, HÉLIO ARAUJO, GEORGES-ÉTIENNE PARENT, NICOLE M. MEIER. ARCHITECTS—ALLIANCE: PETER CLEWES, ADAM FELDMANN, OLIVER LAUMEYER, BARB ZEE, HELEN TRAN, NICOLAS PETERS, SOPHIA RADEV, DELE OLADUNMOYE, ROBERT CONNOR, LISA MAHARAJ, ANNA WAN, JASON DELINE, CARL CALIVA. GIANNONE PETRICONE ASSOCIATES—RALPH GIANNONE, ANDRIA VACCA, CASSANDRA HRYNIW, CARLO ODORICO, KATHERINE FRENCH, AMY PICCINNI, TRACY HO, SHANE ALHARBI, YOLAND SENIK, HUNG HOANG. URBAN STRATEGIES—GEORGE DARK, DENNIS LAGO, GEOFF WHITTAKER, CRAIG CAL, PINO DI MASCIO | STRUCTURAL RJC ENGINEERS (DANIEL SOKOLOWSKI) | STRUCTURAL (RESIDENTIAL) JABLONSKY AST & PARTNERS ELECTRICAL/IT/COMMUNICATIONS/AV/SECURITY/LIGHTING MULVEY & BANANI (ERIC CORNISH, OLUMIDE JOSEPH, NIROJAN KETHEESWARAN MECHANICAL THE MITCHELL PARTNERSHIP (JAMES MCEWAN, CAMILLE WILLIAMS) MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL (RESIDENTIAL) NOVATREND CIVIL ODAN/DETECH GROUP, INC.

ACOUSTICS & VIBRATION HGC ENGINEERING | HARDWARE TRILLIUM ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTS | TRANSPORTA-

TION/PARKING BA CONSULTING GROUP | WIND RWDI | FIRE/CODE/LIFE SAFETY/ACCESSIBILITY LRI ENGINEERING,

INC. VERTICAL TRANSPORTATION SOBERMAN ENGINEERING | SURVEYOR J.D. BARNES

OPPOSITE Covered passageways connect the mall to its urban surroundings on all sides. At the west end of the site, a plaza invites special events and performances, with stair-flanked oversized steps serving as seating for spectators. TOP Curved in multiple directions, the canopy is the largest structure of its type in North America. BOTTOM Playfully configured balconies for the high-rise towers, designed by architects—Alliance, add to The Well’s range of visual expressions.

NICK CAVILLE

A NEW LEAF

AN INNOVATIVE CONSERVATORY TAKES INSPIRATION FROM THE SUBTLE COMPLEXITY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA WITHIN IT.

PROJECT The Leaf, Assiniboine Park, Winnipeg, Manitoba

ARCHITECTS KPMB Architects in association with Architecture49 with HTFC Planning & Design and Blackwell

TEXT Lawrence Bird

PHOTOS Ema Peter, unless otherwise noted

One of Winnipeg’s most popular parks has become home to an innovative new conservatory. The Leaf, by Toronto’s KPMB Architects in partnership with Winnipeg firms Architecture49 and HTFC Planning & Design, is a building and set of landscapes that are oriented, in every respect, toward the sun. Minimizing structural and mechanical systems, and eschewing glass in favour of an innovative material assembly, the designers have created a complex as light and intricate as the flora and fauna living within it.

Assiniboine Park has been one of Winnipeg’s most prominent green spaces since its creation in 1904. Designed by Frederick Todd, Canada’s first registered landscape architect, the park spoke the language of the Victorian City Beautiful movement: it was expansive, picturesque, and domesticated. One of the gems within this symbol of Empire was the grand Palm House, where exotic plants from around the world were displayed. But times and styles change, and in 1970, Pratt Lindgren Snider Tomcej and Associates’ conservatory entombed and then replaced the Palm House, deploying concrete and brick in service

of a sober, sensitive modernism. The Leaf, which replaces the conservatory, speaks a completely different tongue of biomimetic, biophilic and culturally informed design.

As it is for any plant, sunlight is a driving force for The Leaf. The designers’ intention was to open the roof and raise the visitor’s eyes to the sky. To this end, in place of glass the designers selected the more transparent, lighter, and flexible Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). They worked with Blackwell Structural Engineers to dematerialize the overhead structure. Instead of beams or trusses, a cable net support hangs from a central diagrid mast. Based on a rotational hyperboloid, the net’s anticlastic curvature allows it to be prestressed for rigidity. An array of ETFE pillows the longest 87 metres in length flows down the net. In section, these ETFE cushions are triple-ply lenses, with the middle ply perforated to equalize air pressure along the length of each cushion.

To see ETFE deployed at this scale, in a climate similar to Winnipeg’s, design architect Mitchell Hall of KPMB took the team on a field trip to Kazakhstan to study Foster + Partner’s Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center. But a number of design gestures make the Winnipeg design more interesting and more technically challenging than the Kazakhstan building. Foster’s roof is radial, elliptical, and symmetrical. In contrast, the Leaf’s cushions flow down in an asymmetrical array.

They follow a Fibonacci spiral a pattern that recurs in many natural forms, from sunflowers to galaxies. As Lee McCormick, managing principal of architect of record firm Architecture49, explains, this beautiful gesture is also site-specific. The highest floor level in the Leaf, housing a butterfly enclosure (one of four interior biomes), corresponds to the top floor of an iconic existing tower near the centre of Assiniboine Park. To accommodate this raised space and provide views to the tower, one edge of the roof was split and lifted; the opposite edge is scalloped. Where the cushions encounter the ground, they fan into two lobes. Architect Mitchell Hall grows bonsais, and likens the nipping and clipping that achieved The Leaf’s form to the trimming a gardener does to perfect their plants.

The twisting design, combined with the 150-millimetre depth of the tensile net that supports it, created an overturning effect at each of the

PREVIOUS SPREAD A tropical zone is one of four biomes housed within The Leaf. ABOVE Outside, a series of themed landscapes leads from the park’s entrance to the building. RIGHT The Leaf’s ETFE roof cushions follow a Fibonacci spiral pattern as they flow down in an asymmetrical array. At the top of the structure, one edge of the roof lifts to accommodate an interior butterfly enclosure.

PUBLIC/LOBBY

PAID ADMISSION AREA

RESTAURANT/EVENT VENUE

RESTAURANT/EVENT OPERATIONS

HORTICULTURE OPERATIONS

BUILDING OPERATIONS

EXTERIOR/TERRACE

666 nodes. That challenge was resolved by engineer David Bowick’s asymmetrical node design a rather intriguing, insectoid form that seems to suit the long, wing-like expanse of the ETFE tubes. Left to itself, the roof would, in fact, fly away. Uplift is counteracted by a perimeter ring beam, an immense raft slab, and a hollow-core concrete service block that houses the restaurant, kitchen, office and support spaces.

The diagrid supporting the tent-like roof and walls cleverly integrates structure with electrical and mechanical needs, along with vertical circulation. Luminaires and reflectors are concentrated at the top of the diagrid to avoid blocking sunlight; they bounce light down into the biomes. The light changes to echo the phases of the moon, thunderstorms, and even northern lights. Seven storeys up, a floating catwalk arcs around the diagrid to reach the butterfly enclosure. As they walk this route, visitors pass a laminar waterfall designed by Dan Euser, creator of the September 11 Memorial Fountain in New York City. The journey is reminiscent of canopy walks in rainforests, with the waterfall misting the air. The waterfall also serves a functional purpose: in combination with a fog misting system tucked into the lush landscape at ground level, it helps

maintain the relative humidity of the subtropical biome. Another feature of the diagrid is an array of exhaust dampers near the top. Paired with a band of BAS-controlled relief dampers around the skirt of the building, this generates a stack effect that allows for mainly passive ventilation. The system is aided by high-velocity nozzles on the sides of the raised walkway, which actively mix the air as needed.

Mechanical ingenuity continues in the fire suppression system. To avoid overhead obstructions, the designers proposed an alternative solution to the code-mandated sprinklers and smoke baffles. Rather than burning or melting in case of fire, ETFE crinkles and retracts. The designers determined that holes opening in the material, in combination with the stack effect, would ventilate smoke rapidly from the building.

The designers thought of the building as a living organism, its internal environment regulated by mostly natural means. Passive solar heating and an open-loop geothermal system are supplemented by a condensing boiler for peak loads. The geothermal system also heats the root systems of the plants, and the pathways winding between them. LEED certification is currently underway.

Of course, landscape is at the heart of any garden. Landscape architect Monica Giesbrecht and her team at HTFC Planning & Design modelled the interior biomes in clay, feeling there was no substitute for a tactile understanding of space, heights of different levels, and the subtle undulations of the plant beds. The subtropical biome is essentially a single 2,000-square-metre space, but the crafty design winds long paths through it and screens perimeter service corridors behind plantings, transporting visitors to a different clime. The plants that fill the rich, immersive landscapes have exceeded expectations for growth.

A set of new exterior gardens surrounding The Leaf is organized along a strong axis from the park’s southeast corner. Nine distinct outdoor gardens border or intersect the main promenade, while a series of mounds arrayed at irregular intervals to either side of the axis frame strong views to the partially earth-bermed Leaf building. The layout recalls similar axes and mounds created by Indigenous cultures that spanned areas from Manitoba to Central America. While Giesbrecht says that this was not the intention, she does underline that the design and process were intentionally decolonizing.

To develop the Indigenous People’s Garden, in particular, HTFC worked with the father-daughter team of David and Cheyenne Thomas (Anishinaabe), and Mamie Griffith (Dene). The Thomases and Griffith consulted with more than thirty Indigenous groups from Treaty One First Nations (the nations who signed Canada’s first treaty in 1871), Shoal Lake First Nation (from which Winnipeg’s water supply comes), and communities in northern Manitoba. The overwhelming feeling of the Indigenous people consulted was that they didn’t have a place in Assiniboine Park.

Indeed, the park is in Winnipeg’s privileged southwest. But there is soon to be a significant shift in the centre of Indigenous influence in the city. The new gardens’ main axis points directly southeast toward Naawi Oodena, a future 64-acre urban reserve less than a kilometre away. What David Thomas (who is also Planning and Design Manager for Naawi Oodena) says is most satisfying about the new gardens is that they “have created a bridge for use of the park for First Nations communities.”

To create that bridge, Elders encouraged the team to pursue collaborative processes as they designed the gardens. The Indigenous People’s Garden is woven with motifs referring to constellations of stars, seasons, elements, and spirits. These spaces, along with David Thomas’s haunting Corten steel “whispering lodges,” are conceived as living storytelling spaces.

All of the gardens, inside and outside of The Leaf, might be seen as such. They are programmed by the Assiniboine Park Conservancy’s education and engagement team for intergenerational teaching across Winnipeg’s distinct seasons. Visiting groups can appreciate, for example,

OPPOSITE On the upper level, a bridge-like walkway leads visitors alongside a waterfall as they travel to the butterfly enclosure.

The lower half of the building houses the Mediterranean biome. Both interior and exterior gardens feature plants that would be commonly found in the diverse home communities of Winnipeggers. OPPOSITE LEFT The canopy walk provides an up-close view of the roof structure, backlit by the setting sun. OPPOSITE RIGHT The nodes and fasteners for the ETFE structure are designed to withstand the overturning forces inherent in the twisting shape.

the technique of espalier which trains pear and apple trees along a sunfacing masonry wall and then enjoy the literal fruits of these methods in The Leaf’s restaurant. They can see how the Kitchen Garden is watered entirely from runoff from the 6,500-square-metre roof. Both interior and exterior gardens feature plants that Winnipeggers will recognize as those they saw (and used, and ate) in their home communities, whether boreal or tropical. The gardens are designed to speak to everyone.

Construction was not without challenges. Components were sourced from around the world. Pandemic-related supply chain delays were compounded by the narrow scheduling window imposed by Winnipeg’s climate. The butterflies themselves proved demanding clients; they require specific accommodations in wind speed in order to fly, and specific wavelengths of light to navigate other wavelengths would render their brilliant colours dull. But such is architecture. As McCormick puts it, designing a building for plants, animals, and humans means three different user groups, often with conflicting needs. He describes the sun as a fourth user: it is the driving factor in this building, as it is for the planet. As he points out, its movement across the sky through the hours and the seasons, and architecture’s adaptation to that movement, create a building whose experience changes profoundly with

time. Coming here at night is a completely different experience from coming here during the day, and winter from summer. David Thomas made a similar observation about the exterior gardens: that they transform at night. For him, that is when he can step into the world of dreams called for by the Elders. Gardens always engage time: the organic and magical environment of The Leaf celebrates it.

Lawrence Bird is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg. CLIENT

TOM ARBAN

BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS OF THE MEMORIAL TO CANADA’S MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN

TEXT Elsa Lam

UNCERTAINTY PERSISTS REGARDING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S DECISION TO AWARD

THE CONTRACT TO A TEAM OTHER THAN THE JURY-SELECTED COMPETITION WINNER.

On December 5, 2023, the ongoing controversy over the award of the federal contract for the National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan came to a head in a two-hour-long debate on the floor of the House of Commons.

Over the course of the conversation, members of Parliament were asked by members of the Bloc Québécois to evaluate the assessment of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, which “denounces the government’s about-face and lack of respect for the rules in deciding not to award the design of the commemorative monument linking the artist Luca Fortin and the architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, which won the competition conducted by a team of experts set up by the Liberal government itself.” The Standing Committee had held two ses-

sions considering the situation, requested documents related to the selection process, and asked for the Ministers of Canadian Heritage and Veterans Affairs at the time of the decision, Pablo Rodriguez and Lawrence MacAulay, to appear before the Committee. (They both declined.)

At the end of the proceedings, 167 MPs concurred, including two Liberals and the members of all other parties, while 149 MPs disagreed with the statement.

MP Luc Desilets, a member of the Bloc Québécois, opened the topic. “The government held a public art competition to select a design concept for the national monument to Canada’s mission in Afghanistan,” he summarized. “There was a bidding process. The government put together a jury of experts to select the winning team. The jury, com-

posed of experts with international experience” including three jurors who had direct involvement or close links to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan, a military historian, an architect, a landscape architect, and an art gallery director “spent hundreds of hours evaluating the proposals and unanimously decided that the winning team was the one made up of architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, artist Luca Fortin and strategic advisor Louise Arbour.”

“To everyone’s great surprise, the government ended up ignoring the jury’s decision and giving the contract to a different team,” he continued, referring to the government’s announcement, a year and a half later, that the memorial would be designed by a team comprised of Adrian Stimson, Visual Artist; MBTW Group, Landscape Architects; and LeuWebb Projects, Public Art Coordinators.

The government has said that it based its decision on the results of a public poll surveying respondents on their reactions to five shortlisted proposals. The poll received 12,048 responses, many of which came

from respondents who participated in Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, family members of those who participated, veterans, or current members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Overall, more than half of the poll’s respondents favoured the Team Stimson proposal, which was selected about 25 percent to 50 percent more often than the Team Daoust proposal, depending on the question asked.

But the government’s own analysis, based on documents dating back to 2021, points to the weaknesses of making a decision based on the poll results. A more recent report on the poll, commissioned from market research and analytics company Léger by the Bloc Québécois, points to several flaws in methodology, concluding that “the online survey conducted for the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan does not respect the basic criteria of a scientific method, and the results cannot be interpreted as the opinion of members of the Armed Forces, nor of the Canadian public.”

While there is a valid and fruitful discussion to be had about the role of public consultations in decisions around public art and architecture, the core of the matter, in this case, is simpler: upholding the integrity of public procurement processes. The rules of the competition were clearly laid out at the outset, and the process of evaluation was led by a jury of experts with the support of a technical evaluation committee. Consultation with veterans was part of the initial process of putting together the competition brief, veterans and the families of the Fallen were represented on the jury, and the results of the public poll were taken into consideration by the jurors.

The reversal of a jury decision, by a poll as by a more overt political process, taints public procurement for public art and public architecture and could have a chilling effect on the willingness of artists and architects to participate in such processes.

“What happened between November 2021 and June 2023 to make the government decide to overturn the jury’s decision?” asked Desilets on the House of Commons floor on December 5. Some 400 pages of internal documents, obtained by the Committee on Veterans Affairs,  reveal uncomfortable conversations between Veterans Affairs Canada and Canadian Heritage, ongoing efforts by staffers to maintain the jury decision, the involvement of the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister’s Office, and the knowledge by all parties that replacing a jury decision with the results of a poll would be a risky endeavour.

A routine use of surveys

What, indeed, happened during those two years? In the documents, things start off normally. Following the jury’s selection of a winning design, Canadian Heritage recommends that, as per regular procedure, the contract should be awarded to Team Daoust. According to its report, the Team Daoust proposal, which centers on a pair of mashrabiya-inspired screens offset to frame a view of the Peace Tower, was chosen by the jury, among other reasons, for its clear expression of the mission’s focus on democracy and human rights, both encompassing and transcending the conflict to communicate a message of hope.

Staffers at Veterans Affairs make minor comments to a memorandum formally notifying the ministers of Canadian Heritage and Veteran’s Affairs of the jury’s choice of winning design. According to the memo, Canadian Heritage would contact Team Daoust, who would proceed towards detailed design, with the monument expected to be completed in time for Remembrance Day in November 2024.

TEAM STIMSON

LEFT Visual artist Adrian Stimson, landscape architects MBTW Group, and public art coordinators LeuWebb Projects’ design is grounded in the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, whose teachings are associated with the four cardinal directions.

From the beginning, there appear to be some questions about the jury’s decision being at odds with the survey results, which staff from Canadian Heritage and Veterans Affairs treat as normal concerns. Canadian Heritage explains that it will manage communications to explain the fact that the winning team was not the design concept preferred in the public polling, and notes that they’ve handled similar situations in the past. As they are preparing to notify the ministers, a manager from Veterans Affairs’ Commemoration Division drafts a series of notes on the survey’s role, detailing that “Canadian Heritage routinely uses surveys in juried design competitions as a tool for assessing broad trends in support for individual designs,” and that “Surveys are designed to assess reactions and preferences on a spectrum, rather than a simple analysis of the popular vote.” She adds: “It should also be remembered that the survey is just one element of broader consultation around the project, which included visioning exercises and consultations with a broad range of stakeholders as well as the composition of the jury itself.”

Responding to what appears to have been a request from higher-ups at Veterans Affairs to segment the data further, isolating responses from veterans and their families, she notes that “Production of a segmented report after jury deliberations have concluded creates the potential for the jury’s decision to be unfairly criticized at a later date based on information that was not available to them.” Cross-tabulated survey results were nonetheless produced in December of 2021.

The memorandum notifying the Ministers of the jury decision in late November 2021 addresses the survey results explicitly. It explains that “The Team Daoust proposal was the second most favoured design concept among survey respondents and received generally positive comments” and notes that “survey respondents only had access to limited information on the finalist team’s proposals (a summary of the design

intent, four images and a 90-second video),” while the jury’s evaluation included “the entire design proposal, including the full design intent; a comprehensive, itemized budget estimate, a detailed technical description of the concept and information on support team members; information provided by the design teams as part of the presentation of their concepts to the jury; input from ACPDR [the National Capital Commission’s Advisory Committee on Planning, Design, and Realty] members and from technical experts in conservation, landscape architecture, engineering and costing; and feedback from stakeholders and the public obtained through the online survey.”

The Privy Council and Department of Justice weigh options

Team Stimson’s name first appears in the correspondence in January of 2022, in a three-page document prepared for use by a director in Veterans Affairs for an upcoming briefing. The note, sent by a director from Veterans Affairs’ Commemoration Division, seems to address a new argument that Team Stimson’s proposal should be preferred since it includes the names of Fallen soldiers. “It is notable that the Team Stimson design concept, which received between 52 and 62% support across all questions, includes the names of the Fallen and significant thematic/educational content, although these elements were not required in the Program and Design Guidelines. In addition, the video puts a strong emphasis on visitor interaction. The Team Daoust design concept, which did not present these elements, received between 23 and 40% support across all questions, with its lowest result in its potential to educate visitors.” It adds: “Team Daoust demonstrated openness to including the names of the Fallen in their monument design in response to a question by a jury member during their presentation on May 20, 2021.”

ABOVE The central area of Team Stimson’s proposal is surrounded by Corten steel walls, inscribed with the names of the fallen. “When soldiers and other mission personnel entered the protected space of the base from the field beyond, they removed their flak jackets and protective gear, often placing them on makeshift supports—cross-like forms—as they transitioned on into the activities of the base,” writes Team Stimson.

TEAM STIMSON

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INSITES

In conclusion, Veterans Affairs writes: “The only options at this point are to award the contract to Team Daoust or to cancel the design competition and retender. Cancelling the solicitation without just cause will put the Crown at risk for negative press and any bidder can pursue legal recourse again the Crown (potential lost earnings, etc.). The recommendation of PCH [Patrimoine canadien/Canadian Heritage]’s Contract and Material Management Directorate is to proceed with contract award to the winning bidder, Team Daoust.”

But the matter continues into February, when representatives from the Privy Council Office as well as Canadian Heritage’s legal team become involved. The agenda for a meeting planned between these parties on March 3, 2022 includes looking at the advantages and risks of three options: “issuing a contract to the team selected by the jury,” “cancelling and retendering the competition,” and “issuing a design contract to a finalist not selected as winner by the jury.” In advance of this meeting, a director at Veterans Affairs discusses their “recommendation/

mitigation actions” of proceeding with awarding the contract to the winning bidder of the design competition, and hosting a series of consultations with Veterans and other stakeholders after the award of contract, focusing on “possible additions to winning design (names of Fallen, additional educational content).” (A Veterans Affairs note from around the same time adds the caveat that “we have some concerns about including names of the Fallen including names is counter to some of the fundamental guidelines and vision of the monument.”)

The Department of Justice weighs in on April 1, issuing an eightpage legal opinion, followed by a three-page follow-up in mid-May. These are redacted in the public record, but presumably address the advantages and risks of the three tabled options.

By that time, a new meeting had been planned for May. In addition to including the Privy Council Office, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the meeting would also involve a representative from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Prime Minister’s Office gets involved, and a push for more consultation

In preparation for the meeting, a detailed flowchart, created by Canadian Heritage with feedback from Veterans Affairs, points to a new option: additional consultations could be planned, and the jury asked to re-deliberate the competition taking into account the results of these consultations. The caveats, laid out in the chart, are that unanimous consent for new consultations must be agreed on by the five bidders, and the jury must agree to reconvene and consider the new elements. There is also the possibility that, at the end of all this process, the jury could maintain its original selection.

Some version of this option seems to have been the one selected in the meeting. The Privy Council follows up the next month with Canadian Heritage: “Did you get any clarity on how they [Veterans Affairs] want to proceed with the consultations? […] There is a lot of interest here on next steps and starting to hear requests about another 4C [fourparty meeting] which we’d like to avoid, so just need a bit more infor-

mation to reassure the folks next door [presumably the Prime Minister’s Office, which shares a building with the Privy Council Office] that things are well in hand.”

A seven-page legal opinion (again, redacted) is prepared in June, with a series of follow-ups, presumably to address the selected approach. Either at the May meeting with the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council, or in response to the legal advice, the consultation takes a slightly different format one that avoids seeking the agreement of competitors and jurors to re-evaluate the competition results, but instead has an eye towards either confirming a winner, or cancelling the competition altogether.

In July, while “awaiting further direction from above,” Veterans Affairs moves forward with preparing for this further round of consultation. A draft version of the consultation documents states their purpose as: “to gather information to inform the decision regarding whether or not  it is in the public interest to proceed with the current procurement process or reset it and start a new process ” [italics original to document].

In order to do this, the consultation would consist of a poll asking respondents if the original vision for the monument to “recognize an important chapter in Canada’s history and pay tribute to the commitment and sacrifice of Canadians in helping to rebuild Afghanistan” was still valid in light of the current situation in Afghanistan.

A document in November, outlining an even more comprehensive option to “revalidate the design considerations,” details that this round of consultation would be positioned as a response that considers the takeover of the country by the Taliban in August 2021. “This potential shift in perceptions of the legacy of Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan means we need to consult further and ensure the design for the Monument is sensitive and responsive to the needs and wishes of all those who served in Afghanistan […] and the Canadian public,” it states. The document outlines a twophase consultation, with an online survey followed by qualitative consultation that “could include round-tables, one-on-one interviews, etc.”

This consultation approach is never employed suggesting that the goal of the exercise was not to ensure that the selected design was supported by more robust consultation. The Privy Council Office asks for an update in November of 2022, suggesting that political pressure may also have been mounting.

By January 12, 2023, the Minister of Veterans Affairs has made their final decision to award the contract to Team Stimson. Veterans Affairs realizes that this is risky. To maintain its “critical path” of successfully announcing the winner, it notes several key hypotheses: including that the competitors do not file a complaint with the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, that Team Daoust accepts an offer of 10% remuneration ($34,200), without further discussion or negotiation, and that families of the Fallen are supportive of the decision.

In further correspondence in early February, Canadian Heritage continues to note that while its contractual team would usually correspond with the designers, it is uncomfortable with conveying this decision; as a result, Veterans Affairs agrees to send the letters indicating that the contract is being awarded to Team Stimson. In May 2023, the Minister of Canadian Heritage signs a document with their required assent for the contract to be awarded to Team Stimson.

“What is the reason behind it?”

Team Stimson has accepted the contract, but the government’s actions are still under scrutiny. “Would the government have asked for a legal opinion and offered money to a team if it had acted legitimately?” asked

LEFT Architectural firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, artist Luca Fortin and strategic advisor Louise Arbour’s design centres on two offset walls that evoke mashrabiya screens, or the mesh eye window of a burqa.

INSITES

MP Luc Desilets in the House in December. “The reasons given by the government to justify pushing the Daoust team aside and choosing the Stimson team just do not hold water. What is the reason behind it? […] I think we all agree; it is not hard to grasp that the decision came from high up and there was interference. At the moment, there is no other credible explanation.”

In defense of the government, MP Kevin Lamoureux said, “It is important to recognize that monuments play a very important role for our entire society. Recognizing that, it takes time to do the consultations and to work with people to ensure we get the right monument, which is what we are seeing with respect to Afghanistan. I believe that, once it is complete, all of us will be proud of that monument.” He continued, “I support the government’s initiatives we have taken to date to support our veterans. […] I have confidence in Canada’s civil servants to ensure that there is a process that is reflective of being fair and transparent. I believe the information that was gathered is in fact accurate. […]  Unless there is evidence to demonstrate that there was something wrong with what the civil servants or whoever conducted the questionnaire, or survey, did, I would suggest we accept it as we have done on many other policy points.”

“I believe the monument being proposed and constructed for the people who served in Afghanistan is the appropriate one,” said Lamoureux. “Ultimately, I look forward to its completion and dedication.”

MP Blake Richards, of the Conservative Party, replied: “In the original talking points of the government about this, when it was planning to an-

nounce it back in 2021, it said why it was important to follow the jury’s decision above that of this survey. Now it is using this survey as the reason for it, so everyone knows that is not the truth. That is not [the] reason it is not proceeding with the monument originally chosen by the jury.”

Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus added: “The battle that we are waging today is not necessarily about whether we personally prefer the Daoust team’s monument, the Stimson team’s monument or one of the other […] monuments that were proposed. It is not about that. It is about respecting what was done as part of a clear government process, with specific rules. What we are seeing today is an insult to those government processes. When I talk about the concept of an institution, I am talking about an organization that has principles and rules that should be followed. What we are seeing right now is a lack of respect for the institution, a lack of respect for the rules and a purely political decision [...].”

NDP MP Lindsay Mathyssen also weighed in: “I simply do not understand why, after going through so much of that process over eight years and after having that jury determine the winner and artist of the monument design, the government would do such an about-face.”

A need to set higher standards

Many answers have been provided in the past months, but a few questions remain. First, how best to move forward with the Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan? A year and a half ago, the gov-

TEAM DAOUST

ernment considered three options: cancelling the competition, moving forward with the winning design, or moving forward with another design. Given the public scrutiny of its present choice, it would seem wise to admit to its error, and either move forward with the winning design, or, if it feels that the conditions underlying the competition brief have sufficiently changed, cancel and restart the process.

In tandem with this, there is a need to ensure that open selection processes in public art, architecture, landscape architecture, and all other fields of procurement are informed, objective, and free from political patronage and the appearance of influence from behind closed doors. More robust public consultation tools can also be part of selection processes, but their methodology must be fully considered, and the use of these tools in the evaluation of bids must be fully transparent at the outset.

Where did the decision to award the project to Team Stimson, as opposed to Team Daoust, come from? The initial concerns about the survey’s disparities with the jury decision, and the later concern about including the names of the Fallen on the monument, both seem to be robustly addressed by Canadian Heritage and Veterans Affairs staff. The involvement of the PMO ’s office and Privy Council Office suggests that there may have been political interference from a higher level. Even though the Minister of Veterans Affairs at the time of the decision, Lawrence MacAulay, owned the decision when it was made earlier this year, he has remained silent. This included declining to speak during the House of Commons debate

even though he was sitting in the House during the debate, and is now Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in Canada.

What does this mean for Canadian architects and artists? It’s rare that the procurement of a work of public art is the subject of more than two hours of Parliamentary Committee hearings, and an additional twohour debate on the House of Commons floor. Our MPs were sitting through that debate doubtless the longest exposure they’ve ever had to a discussion about the processes underlying public art or architecture design competitions. It provided a rare occasion to help inform them about the value of public art and architecture, and the importance of fair, transparent procurement processes an education that has the potential to provide lasting value beyond the current memorial. There is an opportunity for the government to change its mind, honour fair process and transparency, and set higher standards for the fair procurement of public art and architecture. Let’s hope they do so.

OPPOSITE A view of the Peace Tower is framed by the space between the walls, evoking the promise of democracy. Team Daoust says they were inspired the Leonard Cohen lyrics: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” ABOVE The walls are overlaid with a graphic of the mountains in the region of Afghanistan where the Canadian Armed Forces were sent. At night, a line of light and misting pavers intersects the remembrance wall where it splits open.

TEAM DAOUST

DAVID PENNER ARCHITECT

Edited by Tom Monteyne, Jaya Beange, and Owen Swendrowski Yerex. With additional contributions by Eduardo Aquino, Jason Robbins, Ed Epp, Jac Comeau, Dan Wolfrom, Paul Birston, Gerhard Dehls, Chris Wiebe, Matthew Penner, Peter Sampson, Helio Rodrigues, Paul Ingham, Lindsay Reid, Jane Bridle, Don Minarik, Stationpoint Photographic, and Gerry Kopelow (Storefront MB, 2023)

REVIEW Lawrence Bird

David Penner, who passed away in 2020, was one of Winnipeg’s most prominent contemporary architects and, as a recent publication on his work confirms, also one of its most beloved.

The book was edited, curated and designed by friends and colleagues Tom Monteyne, Jaya Beange and Owen Swendrowski Yerex. 180 fullcolour pages of photographs and line drawings document 20 of Penner’s best buildings: from a Little Free Library and a Warming Hut (“Corogami,” created hors concours and smuggled onto the river ice); to a range of institutional and commercial programs a museum, an arts centre, a hotel, a library and several residences, including his own. Each building is accompanied by a brief description from the editorial team, and an extended quotation from a colleague or a client.

In keeping with David’s character, none of these quotations feel like eulogies. They are fond (and sometimes acerbic) memories of the man: celebrations of his art and his tremendous skill at it. One of them is authored by Dan Wolfrom of Wolfrom Engineering. In perhaps the greatest compliment from a peer discipline, the engineer commissioned Penner to design not only his office, but his cottage, too. The dynamic forms of these two buildings embody Penner’s imagination, the respect others had for that imagination, and Penner’s alacrity at exercising it collaboratively. Penner had an exceptional ability to push form, structure, materials, and people to perform at their best.

After completing his first significant work at Stecheson Katz Architects, Penner set off to found his own firm in 1993. Over the course of his career, he authored some of Winnipeg’s most significant build-

ings, across a broad range of programs and scales. As a designer, he was always in pursuit of the new idea and the beautiful, stirring form.

Penner also raised the design bar for Winnipeg by spearheading the creation of Storefront Manitoba, a not-for-profit (and now charity) advocating for architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and city planning. Since its founding in 2010, the organization has organized a plethora of activities promoting design, including the annual Winnipeg Design Festival, and competitions like Cool Gardens (landscape) and Benchmark (street furniture). It is the publisher of a series of books that provoke spatial imaginings and celebrate good design the most recent of which is the present volume on Penner.

Penner’s influence on the design culture of the province he lived in, and on the lives, abilities, and careers of several generations of his peers, is manifest throughout these pages. As the reader moves through the book, they feel they come to know him better. Perhaps the description that best captures him as a person and a designer is “An Inimitable Rogue” the title of the book’s introduction, penned by Dr. Eduardo Aquino and Elyssa Stelman. This moniker points astutely to Penner’s irascible and indefatigable nature. His willingness to push the envelope is well summarized in the concluding lines of the book, by close colleague Chris Wiebe: “From David’s example, I learned the nuances of risk: know what they are, and choose the right ones to take. More importantly: take them!”

Such recollections remind us that David was unique, and that while it is true that no one could imitate him, we could all learn from him. His legacy in Manitoba is assured, and this book is a fitting contribution to it.

GERRY KOPELOW

RED PHOTO CO.

OPPOSITE LEFT David Penner at Table for 1200, an annual event hosted by the organization he created, Storefront Manitoba. OPPOSITE RIGHT Penner’s design for the Manitoba Electrical Museum adaptively reused a Winnipeg electrical substation building. TOP The coloured bars surrounding Penner’s Mere Hotel serve as a privacy device, and are intended to evoke an abstracted forest. BOTTOM LEFT Penner’s design studio occupied a pyramid-shaped structure in his backyard. BOTTOM RIGHT Engineer David Wolfrom commissioned Penner to design his office on an infill site south of downtown Winnipeg.

DAVID PENNER ARCHIVES

DAVID PENNER ARCHIVES

All Things Move: Learning to Look at the Sistine Chapel

By Jeannie Marshall (Bibliosis, 2023)

REVIEW Adele Weder

For much of the past millennium, Christian iconography has dominated the Western world’s art and architecture, often fusing the two fields together in one building. The fresco-packed Sistine Chapel, embedded within the Pope’s official residence in Vatican City, is one of the most renowned of such structures. In her book All Things Move: Learning to Look at the Sistine Chapel, Jeannie Marshall makes a unique case for considering the Chapel as something other than a religious enclave, scholarly artifact, or checklist tourist attraction. It’s all those, of course, but its otherworldly qualities transcend religious, academic, or tour-bus affiliations.

Built in the late 15th century, the Chapel is mostly celebrated for being lined with masterpiece frescoes of Biblical scenes, painted by many of the best Renaissance artists. But the building itself cannot be separated from those embedded images on its walls and ceilings neither conceptually nor literally. It is difficult to even think of the Sistine Chapel scrubbed of its art: it would transform into a different building altogether. The circulation passages, the trompe-l’oeil cornices painted onto the ceilings and corners: all of this this underpins the author’s engagement with the building’s famed frescoes.

Marshall has spent the past 20 years living in Rome, periodically visited the Chapel, and has interwoven history, memoir, and journalistic observation to explore new ways to engage with this vaunted landmark. Significantly or not she is a self-described “agnostic, looking at art for its beauty and secular meaning.”

Although Michelangelo’s prowess as an architect equalled his renown as an artist, he didn’t design the physical building. But his commission to illustrate the Chapel interior with the story of the creation of humanity can be called a design brief for the ages. A procession of discrete frescoed galleries in the larger building eventually leads to the climactic ceiling tableau of God reaching out His index finger to create Adam, lying supine on a bed of clouds. “It is just a room,” she reiterates, “but it feels like its own universe.”

The Apostolic Palace, which houses the Chapel, is the Pope’s official residence; it doubles as one of the world’s top art galleries. The building itself is rarely promoted in tourism campaigns or analyzed in architectural history texts, not because it has failed as artgallery architecture, but precisely because it has succeeded. That is, if you believe the role of a gallery is to carry the art in a way that encourages the visitor to engage with the interior life of the art rather than as a visual meme.

To be sure, architecture is just one of many sub-themes in this book, which toggles between personal philosophy, art history, family drama, political history, and contemporary literature. The wonderfully evocative title derives from American poet Heather McHugh’s poem “What He Thought,” about the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno in 1600 for heresy. Bruno averred that God did not stand at a fixed point at the centre of an orbiting universe “but rather is poured in waves through all things. All things move.”

Bruno was later exonerated and celebrated by scientists, because of course all things do move, literally, as our puny earth orbits the sun, which in turn orbits our galaxy, and so forth. But all things move conceptually as well: the Sistine Chapel has “moved” so far away from its original purpose as religious pedantry and proviso, as this unique memoir eloquently reveals. Yet no one including the most Godless pagan would suggest it be demolished. We can apply that philosophy to heritage architecture as well: it can rarely serve its original historic purpose, and yet it can move on to become a vessel carrying so much more meaning than its initial program.

I would love for some curious scribe, or perhaps Marshall herself, to use this book as a springboard for a deep dive into the Chapel’s architecture and strategic “interior design” (though it sounds almost blasphemous to call it by such a pagan term). The actual architect of the Chapel, Baccio Pontelli, isn’t even mentioned in the book, let alone credited. Who was he, and what else did he build? Did he confer with Michelangelo and the other Renaissance artists on the frescoes lining his building, or like some other architects, was he envious of their acclaim or dismayed that their work didn’t align with his design intentions?

In Marshall’s book, I read and recollected wistfully how the ceiling tableau of Adam and God is so far from the ground and at such an angle that one cranes one’s neck uncomfortably just to catch a somewhat anticlimactic glimpse of those Boys. Did Michelangelo, or his client, intend this? What else can we know about the perspectival effects, the trompe l’oeil, the labyrinthine circulation pattern that lures us to this hallowed room? I would love a follow-up book to delve into all of that.

The book concludes with Marshall’s thoughts about the significance of viewer engagement with art, that it “answers a human yearning, a basic need to engage at a level beyond the rational and beyond the spiritual.” It’s a thought that applies equally to the architecture that contains it, and a pertinent thought for every reader and designer on every project for the ages, including for our own age.

Design Trails: Adventures of a Structural Engineer

By Paul Alexander Fast (2023)

REVIEW Tim Ibell

Most books devoted to structural engineering focus on the techniques and processes which underpin great structural engineering. But this book is different. Design Trails: Adventures of a Structural Engineer by Paul Fast focuses on the human stories behind great structural engineering. The reader is offered the privilege to enter Paul’s life, and to experience the delightful and intimate sets of adventures which have cumulatively led to Paul’s extraordinary success in our profession.

I have stated before that the dividing line between the Gold Medallists of our Institution and the rest of us is astonishing creativity in all they do. As one of our Gold Medallists, Paul oozes creativity, and his book reveals the stories behind this wonderful talent.

The reader quickly picks up that Paul’s adoration for life’s simplest but most precious attributes such as nature, family, friends, and having ideas completely underpins his approach to, and success in, structural engineering. From Gulpy the Whale (don’t ask, just read it) to the restoration of Mannheim, the book provides an insight into the mind of an extraordinary designer and inventor a great engineer, in other words.

Anyone who knows Paul or his work will know that he is one of the world’s leading structural-timber designers. The book crams in a vast array of Paul’s wonderful creativity in timber engineering. The global move among structural engineers and architects to timber for all the right reasons is accelerating, and Paul is far ahead in this game. At its heart, this book is really about celebrating living wood and structural timber in equal measure. If you are looking for inspiration about how to use timber in your designs, then this book is for you. Interspersed with this inspiration is a set of stories about Paul’s family’s interactions with the life of the timber when it was living wood. This adds to the brilliant use of timber we all love a good story, after all.

There is a fabulous quote cited in the book by Antoine de SaintExupéry: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left

to take away.” This completely exemplifies the work of Paul, and the basis of all examples in the book.

Among the exquisite photographs of extraordinary structures, the imagery includes many simple, but illuminating, sketches and photographs depicting key underpinning structural principles to demonstrate what lies at the heart of the final complex-looking outcome. These explanations are gold dust for the reader, explained so beautifully.

The ‘Disappointments’ chapter is phenomenally important to students of structural engineering, of any age. Often, when someone at the top of their game is spoken about, the temptation is to believe that all they have touched has turned to gold, and that their path has somehow been easy. This chapter slices through this wonderfully, and brings Paul closer to the ‘normal’ reader. Disappointments are discussed in terms of positive lessons learned and, indeed, exploited years later. Brilliant, and humble.

A great lesson for all of us is to invite ourselves to talk to the greatest engineers and architects of our generation. Paul did this earlier in his career, and became inspired. His heroes said ‘yes’ to meeting him, and he learned bags.

Paul tells the story about using his own hands to build his log cabin in a snowy landscape. It is hard to imagine anything more stereotypical about British Columbia. It demonstrates so clearly that Paul is far more than merely a designer. English engineer Chris Wise is known for categorizing design-team members into one or more of ‘Philosopher’, ‘Artisan’ or ‘Artist’. Paul is all of the above, and the book offers insights and ideas to all three types of reader.

In short, this is a delightful, inspirational book for any designer wanting to use our natural resources beautifully, with respect, and with the greatest skill.

Professor Tim Ibell is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Design at the University of Bath. He is a former President of IStructE, and a former Chair of JBM.

LEFT Fast + Epp is currently restoring Frei Otto’s Mannheim Gridshell in Germany. RIGHT Fast + Epp was selected by Cannon Design as the engineer for the Richmond Skating Oval’s long-spanning wood roof.

HUBERT BERBERICH (WIKIMEDIA)

STEPHANIE TRACEY

GENERATING INTEREST

TEXT Elsa Lam

RDHA TRANSFORMS AN EMERGENCY GENERATOR ENCLOSURE INTO A REFINED PIECE OF URBAN SCULPTURE.

When RDHA was commissioned to design a new emergency generator tower to service Toronto’s Union Station, its architects saw an opportunity to design something more than a standard metal box. The enclosure, says principal Tyler Sharp, instead creates “an object of intrigue” for people driving past on Lakeshore Boulevard and the Gardiner Expressway.

Sharp’s concept took inspiration from the generator tower’s immediate neighbour: the 1930 Scott Street signal tower, a hip-roofed, Italianate structure designed by the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Chief Engineer of Buildings at the time, John Wilson Orrock.

The generator structure replicates the heritage building’s dimensions, tripartite

massing, and roadway setback. In place of brick, it is rendered in lightly polished aluminum. Sections of the panels are angled open to allow for natural ventilation of the machinery within, adding texture and detail to the sculptural form. While the enclosure is rarely occupied, a service door is concealed at the east end of the façade. The result is a shimmering, abstracted twin of the nearly century-old structure.

Between the generator building and the signal tower, a concrete retaining wall is detailed with equal care: a curve at the base recalls the signal tower’s round-topped windows and gently curved roof lines, and a planter at the top will allow for ivy to cascade down its surface.

“We often get these down-and-dirty projects, and we fight to elevate them,” says Sharp. He reflects how in the 1930s, it was normal for utilitarian buildings such as the signal tower to be treated as civic architecture. “That was a generation where they put effort into infrastructure.” RDHA’s work on the accompanying generator tower aims to revive that spirit: “This is a generation that is trying to put effort into infrastructure.”

Even though the level of design involved is more complex and convincing clients to invest in such projects can be challenging the effort is worth it, says Sharp. “There’s so much that can be beautified in the city.”

ABOVE Lightly polished aluminum panels clad the emergency generator’s enclosure. Sections of panels are angled to provide natural ventilation to the equipment.

We deliver uncompromising performance.

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At 19 storeys and spanning 345,000-square-feet, the Center for Computing & Data Sciences is the largest sustainable and operational fossil fuel-free building in Boston. Often referred to as, “the most environmentally friendly tower in the city,” it has also been named one of ten projects shaping architecture in 2023 by Azure Magazine. We are proud to have delivered structural and envelope services on this exemplary KPMB-designed addition to the University.

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Build distinction that stands out.

www.kingspanpanels.ca

Pioneering Products that Elevate Design and Efficiency.

At Kingspan Insulated Panels, we’re pioneering better technologies and methods of building for a low carbon world. Kingspan insulated metal panels are the next generation of building envelope, offering an unparalleled combination of aesthetic flexibility, energy efficiency and thermal, air, water and vapor barrier performance.

Northern Arizona University Student-Athlete High Performance Center | Flagstaff, Arizona

KS Mini Micro-Rib